


Breaking Down

by Lulzy (likelolwhat)



Series: When Coldharbour Calls [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dragonknight Vestige, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Spoilers for early AD quests, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Violence, having no soul has... interesting effects, messing with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3251762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likelolwhat/pseuds/Lulzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaylaneth thought her life would end at the tip of a sacrificial dagger as yet another soulless, nameless slave of Molag Bal's. That was before a blind man rescued her from the darkness and spoke of destiny as if he knew its path. But he's nowhere to be found after their escape, and <i>destiny</i> decides it prefers she do something else. Like rub elbows with royalty and play the part of the sacrificial lamb.</p><p>All she wants to do is go home to Southpoint, where things make sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something To Be Frightened Of

**Author's Note:**

> A warning: this fanfiction assumes at fairly detailed knowledge of the tutorial and the first few Aldmeri Dominion story quests, including those on Khenarthi's Roost. If you need a refresher or don't mind some spoilers, I recommend checking out the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, aka UESPwiki, or skimming over some of the excellent let's plays on YouTube.
> 
>  _Breaking Down_ is likely to be the most canon-reliant part of Kaylaneth's journey, but it is by no means canon-compliant, if that makes any sense. I'm writing on the basis of several headcanons and what-ifs which will make themselves known shortly.
> 
> Story and chapter titles come from Florence + The Machine's song "Breaking Down", which is all kinds of awesome (and terribly underrated) but, alas, not mine.
> 
> (Summary revamped 5/27/15)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stolen from her home in the peaceful town of Southpoint, Kaylaneth's life is over before it even properly began -- but there is light in the darkness that none but the blind can see.
> 
> (last edited 6/30/16)

Kaylaneth didn't know where she was, but she certainly did not want to be there.

Ideally, she would blink and be back in Southpoint, in her own bed. Perhaps recovering from a hoarvor-bite fever, which would neatly explain what blurry and disjointed things she had seen thus far. She couldn't remember being bitten by a hoarvor, but the stupid things weren't exactly hard to find in the swamps where she roamed.

She blinked, but the world remained stubbornly dark, dank, and foul-smelling. She was lying on her back, and when she tried to raise her head she was met with resistance, like there was sap in her hair sticking her to the ground. Odd; her braid was undone. She lifted a hand, heard a _clink_ that did not quite register in her mind until her arm jerked to a stop less than a handspan off the ground and she felt rough-smithed metal dig into her wrist. Shifting the other arm where it lay by her side yielded another _clink_.

Her mind was gradually clearing, like the morning mists over the Long Coast pierced by sunlight. Darkness. Chains.

She was suddenly gripped by a frenzied need to be out. She had always had a fear of being restrained. Yanking desperately at the chains as she kicked her feet, she opened her mouth and — _panicking, unthinking fool_ , she could practically hear her mother's voice now — a stream of flame burst from her mouth as she roared her frustration. The fire lit up her surroundings for a moment, and Kaylaneth caught sight of other prisoners in the cell — for it was a cell — tugging at their own chains as they shuffled away from her as well as they were able.

At the same moment, a high-pitched scream lanced Kaylaneth's sensitive ears. _A child_. As the ringing faded, Kaylaneth heard shushing noises from the others over her own gasping breaths — that skill did tend to wind her — but it was too late.

The thump of many boots on stone outside the cell, and Kaylaneth jerked her head up — her hair was clinging to her scalp, and she dimly realized she was bleeding down her neck — in time to see a torch flicker behind bars of iron. Green light flashed, filling her sight, and she fell back, horrifyingly boneless. _Paralysis spell_ , her mind supplied unhelpfully, even as her body struggled to so much as twitch.

"Now now, what happened here...?" said a man's voice, and though it was deep and smooth as silk, there was a dagger beneath it, a danger that made Kaylaneth's blood freeze, then boil. She tried to growl, but the paralysis was too strong and it came out as a soft, breathy _hhhr_.

Silence from the other prisoners. They had stopped breathing, even, as far as Kaylaneth could hear. Then—

"Fire! She breathed fire!" came the voice of the child. More shushing, but it was cut off as they all seemed to realize what was done was done.

So help her, Kaylaneth was going to throttle that brat if she ever got out of this. But she didn't truly mean it and the anger passed, replaced by fear, when the man spoke again. "A Dragonknight, hmm? Isn't that interesting." He didn't sound all that interested, in actuality, but Kaylaneth was more concerned with the man knowing what she was.

Another voice, female, thin and reedy, spoke up from by the first. "Our Lord will be pleased, won't he?" The plaintive whine in her voice, and the implication of her words, redoubled Kaylaneth's efforts to speak, to move, to _anything_ , but she just wore herself out with the trying. "Dragonknights are rare."

The man, clearly in authority, scoffed. "Molag Bal cares not for the kind of souls we give him, just that they are plentiful. Mind you do not become one of them." He paused, while Kaylaneth tried desperately to comprehend his words. Molag Bal. Souls. She was going to be _sacrificed?_

Frantic murmuring among her cellmates.

"Put a rag in pitch and gag her. Be quick about it."

The boots of the minions thumped on the stone outside as they presumably scrambled to do just that. Kaylaneth was beginning to be able to wiggle her toes when the cell door scraped open and more footsteps approached her supine form. She could not turn her head away as whoever it was pried open her jaw and stuck the foul and heady cloth between her lips. They retreated and the door shut once more.

"That will keep her until tomorrow. Back to the preparations, all of you! Molag Bal demands souls!"

As the footsteps faded away, Kaylaneth's body finally responded enough for her to try pushing the gag out with her tongue. No use.

And what _was_ the use? She was manacled to the floor with no idea where the exit was, probably surrounded by enemies and, if what she could remember of her drug-addled journey was reliable, not even in Valenwood anymore.

Even if she could get the gag out without killing herself, she had no chance. If she had been able to learn how to wreathe herself in fire like the Dragonknights in the books her mother got her...

Her poor mother.

Kaylaneth was overcome then, and as the tears rolled down her face to drip onto her ear-tips, she wondered if she should just breathe fire anyway. Surely that death would be better than serving the Lord of Brutality.

But she had ever been a hopeful girl, and it was that hope that kept her from doing it. She didn't know whether her mother would call her foolish for that or not.

~*~*~*~

Her frail hope lasted right up until the cold tendrils of the soul trap spell reached into her and the Altmer the cultists called Mannimarco held the soul gem that would be her prison aloft, smiling grimly down where she lay in the blood of the child who had gone just before her.

She had been told that time slows down in the instant before people die, that perception warps and memories return to flash before eyes soon to glaze over.

Perhaps it is true for most. It is not like asking a ghost about their death is impossible. Perhaps it was because she didn't truly _die_ , not in the traditional sense. For Kaylaneth, she only had time to suck in a last, futile breath through her nose before the Daedric dagger in Mannimarco's other hand struck true, as it had many times previously and would many times more before the day was out.

And she had never felt an agony like that before, and never would again: her soul, ripping from her body and being consumed whole by the God of Schemes.

_His_ visage, horned and terrible and wreathed in frozen fire, rose up to swallow her. She knew nothing more.

~*~*~*~

Kaylaneth did not wake so much as drift to the shore of the vast and empty ocean that was her being. She didn't want to, but the screaming, though muffled greatly, kept pulling her to awareness.

Screaming, and the sounds of battle.

She was on her feet and turned towards the sound before she had come fully back, making her stumble to the side when consciousness returned in full force.

"Slowly, slowly. You have been through much." A soothing voice came from an empty spot by door of the cell she had awoken in. It was a surprisingly roomy space, but she paid it no mind. Outside, people in rags were racing by in what was either desperate hope or panic. They were shouting to each other.

She moved forward, rocks digging into her bare feet. She barely felt them — she had been running in the forest barefoot (and more) her entire life, and besides there was a mist rising out of nothing by the door, coalescing into the projection of a robed old man with a staff.

She opened her mouth, and let out an embarrassing crackly croak instead of the (probably rude) question she had been going to ask. While she coughed through her sore throat — not the most of her problems, but it was annoying — the man introduced himself and rambled something about mutual aid and being more than he appeared.

Normally, Kaylaneth would have stopped to chat. However, she had spotted an Argonian running for her door, a ring of keys in his hand.

"Hurry!" he said unnecessarily as he unlocked her door and took off again just as fast.

Kaylaneth knew a prison escape when she saw one. As she bolted out the door, the old man's voice echoed directly into her head: _find Lyris Titanborn, she will aid you_.

Hopefully this Lyris wasn't too far out of the way to freedom. Kaylaneth didn't know how she was still alive. Well, she wasn't quite sure she even was alive. In either case — or if she was undead, even — she would take the opportunity presented her.

A few corridors where she steadfastly avoided looking at the skeletons in the cages hanging from the ceiling, and only half-listened to the old man in her head, and Kaylaneth burst out into a large forge-like area. The Argonian was standing by another door, gesturing to a pile of weapons in the center of the room. "Take what you need, but just that! We have a lot of prisoners to arm!" he yelled as she dashed for the pile.

A mace found its way into her hands. It swung well enough, even if it was cheap iron, and as she held it she looked about for the other thing she needed. It wasn't in the pile — there were swords, axes, more maces, staves of various kinds, even a few shabby bows — but she finally found a small wooden shield on a rack in the corner. With it on her arm, she finally felt close to _right_.

Her brothers had all taken to bows or daggers in the typical Bosmer fashion, but Kaylaneth was the odd one out in her family. While her brothers had found their skills lay in the Nightblade style (though they were all specializing in different skill sets the last time Kaylaneth had seen them), she alone took after her mysterious, absent father and trained as a Dragonknight with mace and shield. She wondered if she would ever return home to face stranglers and nereids again.

She destroyed the skeletons in the next rooms, ran into the tallest woman she had ever seen, and agreed to a harebrained scheme of her new friend's to draw the attention of Molag Bal. It was insane, and it didn't work.

But, eventually, she stood with the man who called himself the Prophet before the gate out of this dread realm she had found herself in. The gatekeeper lay shattered into smoking fragments behind them. "I don't know where we'll end up when we arrive," he was saying. "We probably won't land in the same place. I will attempt to contact you when I can through my projection."

All well and good. Kaylaneth was certainly eager to leave Coldharbour behind. But there was a flaw in his plan, and she couldn't help but ask, "How can I be certain I won't land in an enemy alliance's territory? Or in the middle of the ocean? Or... Or in _Cyrodiil?_ " The last one was the most frightening of all.

"Trust in Akatosh. He will not allow you to be lost now," was all she got.

Reassuring, certainly.

With no other options, Kaylaneth took a deep breath and stepped off the edge of the platform. For a horrible second she plunged down into the abyss, then the energy of the portal caught her and buoyed her up, up into the brilliant light above.


	2. Even On My Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her savior nowhere to be found, Kaylaneth finds herself on the path to owing another her allegiance.
> 
> As for home, it's getting further and further away...
> 
> (last edited 6/30/16)

She did, in fact, land in the ocean. The suave Khajiit who was obviously hiding something told her as much: that he had spotted her floating in the open sea and hauled her aboard just before a hurricane hit. He did not pry as to who she was, though he obviously knew she was no Aldmeri Dominion soldier. Instead he guilted her into helping him investigate the (admittedly mysterious) events on the island where he'd dragged her to.

Unlike Razum-dar, as he called himself, most of the people on Khenarthi's Roost assumed she was a soldier and treated her as such without her even needing to lie, which helped, for the most part. She got a better shield out of stopping a second hurricane from wiping out the survivors of the first, but she was stuck with the shoddy Coldharbour mace for the time being, it appeared. Unless someone gave her one in exchange for the help everyone seemed to need, but if there was such a person she must have missed them. Perhaps Mistral, the port city where she was to meet up with her savior, would have a market where she could sell the more useless rewards she had accumulated.

The day was fair, beautiful even, as she crossed the long bridge to Mistral. Seagulls called and the water lapped at the shore far beneath her; these were comforting things that reminded her of home. Mistral itself was very different in feeling than Southpoint though: bigger, and bustling with activity. She longed to just catch the next boat to Haven, but there was Razum-dar, catching her ragged sleeve as she passed through the arch at the end of the bridge.

More work, of course. But she learned that the Silvenar and Green Lady were in town (which would explain the bustle, and the number of Bosmer for a Khajiiti city), and that piqued her interest enough that she did not drag her feet as she headed for the Chantry.

The Silvenar was a nice mer, but he wasn't quite what Kaylaneth had expected. She thought her spiritual leader would have been a bit less down to earth. But she took it in stride — he was so kind! — and set about on the task he set her. She ran into Razum-dar again just as it was proving a difficult endeavor to wrangle anything out of anyone. The Khajiit was pretending to drink at a bar, something Kaylaneth found distasteful even if it was for show, but he had saved her when he didn't have to, and... he was growing on her, in his strange way. She was off to the embassy in short order. She would find the treaty, give it to Razum-dar so he could deal with it, and then, finally, be on her way home.

When she walked in on the rapidly-cooling corpse of the Silvenar, and the Green Lady slammed her up against the wall of the blacksmith's house, iron grip around her throat, Kaylaneth realized that she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

A tempest was brewing over the fair city.

Ulondil pleaded for his life, of course, but she was Bosmer, tree-sap child, and she could not deny the Green Lady her last revenge. She turned away, though, and his screams echoed in the space where her soul had been.

Harrani was angry. The Khajiiti headwoman could not understand, and in any case it didn't matter — another crisis, another storm (a _third?_ These Maormer were certainly one-trick guar, even if this one was infinitely worse), another death and another and another... another too-short pause to gasp for breath when it was over.

~*~*~*~

No boats to Grahtwood; the Prowler was the only ship left after the storm and the attack on Cat's Eye Quay. It was going to the Summerset Isles.

Kaylaneth gave up, then and there, on actively searching for passage home. It appeared the gods were bent on thwarting her. Perhaps if she stopped trying to avoid whatever destiny they obviously had planned, they would let her go home at some point.

She would still poke around the docks in the port cities, though. No sense in being complacent.

~*~*~*~

Bosmer had never been much in the way of sailors in their own right. For one, the deeper jungles of Valenwood were constantly shifting, negating the need for wanderlusting mer to travel by sea to find somewhere new. For another — and this was the bigger reason — the Green Pact made creation of wooden ships without importing materials from somewhere else utterly impossible. Plenty of Bosmer were marines, like Sergeant Firion and her squad, but they worked in ships made elsewhere, and few simple mer had ever needed to travel by sea.

So it was that Kaylaneth had never been on a ship before — while conscious, anyway. Those two weeks were miserable and left the constant itch of bile in the back of her mouth. She was glad to get off in Vulkhel Guard, and made a beeline for shore as soon as the gangplank went out. Sweet, sweet land, even if it was foreign.

She collapsed on the dock, lying face-down on wood that smelled strongly of more saltwater. Her stomach protested again, but at least the dock wasn't rolling back and forth.

"Glad to leave, I see," said the Captain from where she leaned over the railing. If Kaylaneth turned her head (and she had to; even the smell of the sea was nauseating right then) and squinted, she could see the soft-spoken Khajiit, looking at her with what the Bosmer had come to recognize as a teasing expression on her face. Even so, Kaylaneth knew she was being rude.

She rose, wobbled, and found her feet. "Ahh... I'm sorry, Jimila." They had gotten on a first-name basis during the journey. Jimila had come to check on her sick passenger many times, though she was by no means required to, and Kaylaneth had learned that though the Captain was a dangerous Khajiit to cross, she was also generous to her friends. Kaylaneth now had enough money to buy a nice steel mace in Vulkhel Guard, courtesy of a collection fund Jimila had started among the crew after she'd seen the state of the Coldharbour one.

She hadn't asked where Kaylaneth had gotten it, though she had examined the handle critically. Looking at it later, Kaylaneth had spotted what her friend had: tiny Daedric runes etched into the iron. She would be glad to be rid of it. The scar on her chest where the sacrificial knife had struck, though, would probably never heal over.

"No need to worry, Kaylaneth. Ships can be hard to get used to. I do hope you find your sea legs someday, and we meet again."

Unlikely that she would ever be comfortable in a wooden deathtrap, but Kaylaneth did hope she saw Jimila again before she went home. She was in a strange land; she knew no one here. She didn't even know much about how to behave around her giant cousins.

She said her goodbyes to the crew, who had accepted her like a somewhat awkward cousin. Everything she had was now on her back or squirreled away on her person. She had enough for her new mace, perhaps enough for an enchanted one if the merchant didn't try to cheat her, but she would have to make more money somehow after that before she could get passage to Haven, if Jimila was correct. If any ships were running, and if the gods didn't have something more planned for her.

Belatedly, she thought of the Prophet. He had said he would contact her somehow, but it had been weeks. What if he had drowned in the ocean? What if he had landed in enemy territory and been killed? What if he was lost? He was blind... he _had_ seemed to have an otherworldly sense of direction and balance when they were in Coldharbour, though.

Well, then. He had mentioned something about getting her soul back, but she hadn't the faintest idea how to do that alone. She seemed to be functioning fine. Did she need a soul?

_Yes_ , a soft voice that sounded like her mother whispered in the back of her mind.

Kaylaneth sighed and shook her head. A passing guard, on patrol of the area between the docks and the marketplace, looked at her with interest. _Oops_.

"It's nothing. I was just thinking," she said in what she hoped was a placating (and not suspicious) way.

The guard turned fully towards her and crossed his arms. "You are new to the city, correct?" At her cautious nod (were they not accepting travelers?) he continued. "You need to register with the Watch Captain. Security's been tightened and everyone needs to be accounted for." She must have looked puzzled, for he sighed heavily, looked at her like she was stupid, and said, "our new Queen is visiting the city. Now go. Astanya is up by the manor house."

"Which is where?" Her vision of a new mace was slipping further and further away. _Great_.

The guard mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "short on brains" and grabbed her arm, hauling her up the stairs into the market square. His grip was tight and all she could do was stumble along and pray to Y'ffre that she wasn't being arrested. She looked longingly at the crafting bazaar before the guard turned right, yanking her down a bush-lined street and up a flight of stairs into a huge garden with people in robes milling about. A huge building, the biggest Kaylaneth had ever seen, stood on the north end of the garden, and an Altmer in a fancier version of the Watch's uniform stood out in front of it, writing on a scroll as a line of people stood before her.

Watch Captain Astanya, it seemed. She was wearing her hair in a long plait down her back, much like Kaylaneth herself was. Her face was sharply defined, and when she looked up at their approach, Kaylaneth saw interest flicker across that face before it was replaced by her previous expression of indifference.

"Yes, Rordil?" Astanya said, exhaustion bleeding into her voice.

"Another visitor," the guard said, almost guiltily to Kaylaneth's ears. He tugged her up to the end of the line and let go, but Astanya was watching her curiously. After a moment, while the Altmer she had been registering waited with growing impatience, Astanya spoke. "You there, Bosmer. Where did you travel from?"

"Er. Khenarthi's Roost, ma'am." Kaylaneth wasn't comfortable being the object of so much attention yet.

Astanya nodded, like she had expected the answer. "Come forward."

A collective groan from the rest of the line, but they shuffled backwards obediently as Kaylaneth made her way up to the front. She smiled apologetically at them as she passed.

"What is your name?" Astanya asked when the women were face to face — or rather, face to sternum, as Astanya was tall even for an Altmer.

Kaylaneth craned her neck up and answered.

"Ah. You are the one Raz wrote about. He said you two ran into some trouble on Khenarthi's Roost. This could complicate things. The Queen has enemies everywhere, and she will need her protectors around her. Since Raz is gone..." she trailed off, a troubled expression coming over her face.

"What do you mean, he's gone?" Kaylaneth asked. Had he died? She'd grown to like him.

Astanya snapped back into focus. "Oh, no one I know has seen him or heard from him in a while. I wouldn't be worried. That cat is always skulking around somewhere. Doing some cloak-and dagger operation for the Queen, no doubt."

"Razum-dar works for the Queen?" Kaylaneth wasn't sure why she was so surprised. She had known he was hiding something from the moment she'd met him.

"He didn't tell you? Of course not, that cat is a compulsive liar if I've ever known one. He'll turn up at the end of the visit, acting like he was there all along, no doubt. Anyway, you're good to go. I just hope trouble didn't follow you from the Roost."

Kaylaneth laughed. "Me too." Astanya waved her off, turning back to the line of visitors, and Kaylaneth made a beeline for the market. Her new mace was waiting for her.

~*~*~*~

As it turned out, trouble didn't have to follow her for it to turn up uninvited. A day later, after a comfortable rest in the inn ( _floors that don't move! a marvel!_ ) she poked a bit around town. The only person who needed her services (at least, that promised to pay for them) sent her on a chase around Vulkhel Guard for some missing crewmembers, which cumulated in a trip to a nearby beach, where she found the last sailor — and the many, many hostile Maormer who had captured her. Kaylaneth got lucky and managed not to rouse the entire camp to save her target, and the two of them hightailed it back to the city before the rest of the Sea Elves discovered them.

The sailors all accounted for and her reward — a hatchet! Why did these people insist on giving her things she couldn't use instead of good old gold?! — sold to a merchant, Kaylaneth set out to find Astanya. The city needed to be warned. She doubted the Maormer were there on a diplomatic visit, especially considering they attacked her on sight.

She found the Captain by the wayshrine in the residential district, this time watching the road north with her hands on her hips. She was chewing her lip, a most un-Altmer action, but quickly schooled herself when Kaylaneth hailed her.

"Captain! There's—"

"Kaylaneth!" Astanya looked absurdly relieved. _Not a good sign_ , Kaylaneth thought. "Just the mer I wanted to see. Listen, my guardsmen are stretched thin and I need to you help out like you did on the Roost. Can I count on you?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"Good, good. Find Advisor Norion and Steward Eminwe. The steward is in the warehouses near the docks and Norion should be around there as well. We need everything secure for the Queen. She'll be here in just a few hours. Go!"

"Uh—" But Astanya was waving her off, no longer interested, and Kaylaneth was forced to scurry away, cursing under her breath. Hopefully the Maormer wouldn't attack during the visit. If they did, it wasn't her fault; she had tried. At least security seemed tight. There were guards _everywhere_.

She found the steward easily enough, but spent nearly half an hour searching for the source of the poison in every crate and barrel in the warehouses before she, quite by accident, sniffed the foul meat out. She was forced to shove the disgusting stuff in her pockets because Eminwe wouldn't take it, damn her, and then when she recovered the stolen plans for Norion (witnessing a bloody murder while she was at it) he waved her off as well. Like she was some lackey.

Well, maybe she was at the moment.

Quite annoyed with Altmer by that point, she had to force herself to calm down enough to do the next errand Astanya sent her on. She felt horrible, watching the guards take down the man she had deceived (and she wasn't sure what to believe, either), but her day would only get worse.


	3. My Old Familiar Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a Queen wants you to be her spy, everything else loses priority status - but some realities cannot be denied.
> 
> (last edited 6/30/16)

At least, in the end, she got to breathe the fire that killed the traitorous Watch Captain.

Ayrenn probably thought she was doing the Bosmer a favor by naming her an Eye of the Queen, but internally, Kaylaneth was screaming. How was she supposed to go home now? She needed time to process the complicated turns her life had taken in recent weeks, time she wouldn't get to have if she was running about playing spy with Razum-dar.

Speaking of, he had disappeared again. At least Astanya had been right, in a way: the Khajiit had shown up to spring her loose from jail, acted like he had everything under control, and... poof.

Hopefully it would take a while for the Queen and her entourage to get to... Tans-something. The ruin where she was supposed to go next for some silly ceremony. Goodness, even the marriage of the Silvenar and the Green Lady wasn't as complicated as Altmer crownings.

She bought a map. It was fairly detailed, showing ruins and dangerous sites as well as cities, roads and wayshrines. It had insets of Firsthold and Skywatch, as well. Tanzelwil (that was it!) was marked northwest of Vulkhel Guard, about a fourth of the way up Auridon. Not far on the map, and the town of Mathiisen wasn't much farther than that, but she bought supplies for a few days extra just in case. And a bow. She had seen rabbits running around outside of town.

She was finishing up negotiations with Eshaba for a heavy armor repair kit and a small bundle of lockpicks (the merchant did not ask what she wanted them for, which was a mercy; Kaylaneth did not want to explain that she needed them in case she was locked up with a corpse again and Raz wasn't there to rescue her) when the sky darkened above them. The sound of grinding metal assaulted her ears, and what appeared to be a giant Daedric portal appeared in the sky to the northwest.

"What...?" Kaylaneth got out before an anchor dropped from the portal and the ground lurched. The chains connecting Nirn to the portal pulled tight, shaking the ground again, and the sky turned black and stormy for miles around the Daedric device.

"Dolmen!" Eshaba screeched above the sound of rushing air and the screams of the townsfolk. She let go of Kaylaneth, having pulled them both to the ground as the anchor dropped. A smart move — the other merchants and craftsmen around the marketplace had fallen over, several into the armor displays. Mercifully, none had fallen on a sword or cracked their head on an anvil.

"What?!" Kaylaneth didn't understand. What in Oblivion was a dolmen? An attack?

Eshaba grabbed Kaylaneth by her armor again and pulled her up, pointing at the portal. The guards were running around madly along with the townsfolk, and Kaylaneth wondered, dazed, if the investigations following Astanya's betrayal had weakened the watch's ability to respond. "Dolmen!" Eshaba was repeating. "A dark anchor! Dark moons, not here!" She made to run, but Kaylaneth rallied and held her back, clutching her furry arms and screaming into her face, "Eshaba! For Y'ffre's sake, have you seen this before?"

"In Elsweyr!" Eshaba sobbed, struggling in Kaylaneth's grip. "One dropped right on top of Rimmen, destroyed half the town— and then the Daedra came. I thought Auridon was _safe..!_." Kaylaneth let her break away, and the merchant fled, leaving everything behind.

Daedra. She had heard something about Molag Bal trying to merge Nirn and Coldharbour while she was escaping with the Prophet. He hadn't said how, though, and this... this was worse than she could have ever imagined.

Renewed shouting drew her attention, and she ducked out of the shelter of the crafting area to find the Fighter's Guild rallying at their hall. They streamed out of the city's western gates, an Argonian woman in resplendent armor leading the charge. Kaylaneth raced after, strapping her shield onto her arm and holding it high. As she ran past the Mages Guild their doors burst open and a blue-robed squad came out — six of them, much less than the now-emptied Fighters Guild had contributed to the fight — and followed _her_.

The dolmen, as Eshaba had called it, was a great deal further away than Kaylaneth had thought, but she just had to follow the trail of slaughtered and trampled imps to find the Fighters Guild, massed on the hill overlooking the site. The Argonian was speaking to them, gesturing at the anchor — and the oblivious cultists preforming their foul ritual — as she outlined her strategy. Kaylaneth skidded to a halt at the edge of the bloodthirsty and armed to the teeth crowd. The Argonian noticed her arrival and gave her a tiny nod of acknowledgment, then returned to her speech.

"—so: heavy warriors lead, archers behind, anyone who knows even a bit of magic stay back. The Daedra will appear within that ring. When a chain opens, break it quickly, but _do not_ —"

The mage-squad appeared over the rise and, with a mighty cry as one, all six of them charged straight past the fighters and into the cultists.

"—get separated!" the Argonian screeched, whirling around and running full-tilt after them. She and Kaylaneth were neck and neck for a frantic heartbeat, both screaming wordlessly at the mages, then they reached the edge of the circle and laughter — _his_ laughter — boomed from the portal above as the first Daedra came flashing down.

Kaylaneth wasn't aware of much for a while but the laughter and her first opponent: a hideous misshapen atronach made of rotting flesh given a mockery of life. It hit hard, and Kaylaneth could only keep her shield up and pray while it swung clumsily at her. Its arm crashed against her shield, but it held, by Y'ffre it held. The force, however, pushed her back into a banekin. It babbled something malevolent and incomprehensible, and shot her with a jolt of electricity. She went rigid, the breath knocked out of her, and then she heard the little Daedra scream and the pain ended as abruptly as it began.

Her shield was still up, and she ducked the atronach's backswing before leaping forward and inhaling deep. Her aches faded for a glorious moment as she sucked the life from the Daedra nearby, and then a ring of flame formed in the air around her and pushed out, setting the atronach on fire. Oh, how it _roared_. It dropped to one knee, and Kaylaneth smashed its head in with her mace. It took four bashes of the blunt weapon before its skull caved and it stopped moving.

Flesh flew, but she had no time to be disgusted, because there was another atronach throwing fireballs her way, and a dremora hard-pressing the Argonian off to her right. Dimly, she heard a _shink_ , and looked up to see three of the chains were broken, and a Redguard had just released the fourth. _Nearly there_ —

A scrabble of claws on stone.

She whirled right just in time to glimpse the clannfear that headbutted her. She went flying towards the center of the dolmen and landed on the rubble at the base of the stairs, her arm giving way beneath her with a sickening _crack_. She kept going, unable to stop her momentum until she hit the stairs themselves, the back of her head bouncing off the sharp-hewn edge of a step.

Kaylaneth blacked out to the sound of Molag Bal's laughter.

~*~*~*~

Voices murmuring around her. Voices moving away, then back again. Voices lifting her up from her comfortably formless dreams and into the terror and pain that was reality.

"Kaylaneth!"

"No! Nonononono—" She was bound again, writhing on an altar while her soul was wrenched from the place it had occupied for its entire existence and thrust into the nameless and endless agony that was service to the Prince of Brutality. She was being ripped apart again, but there was no Prophet to save her anymore. She was abandoned. She was alone. Alone but for her ever-present tormentors.

"Kaylaneth!"

Voices, screaming into her poor abused ears. She arched away, howling, but they held her fast, cold-burning hands on her fevered bare skin, holding her down and screaming at her.

"No, nonono no—" her words dissolved into garbled nonsense until all that was left was the meaning: _Please. Don't hurt me any more_.

"Kaylaneth!" Just the single voice now, punctuated by a sharp slap to her face that knocked her head to the side and left deep furrows on her cheek that bled heavily on the... pillow.

Her pitch black world burst into light and color, and she blinked at the blurry faces before her. Her heart was aching in her chest, thudding painfully and out of tune with her ragged breaths. It was not a stone slab beneath her, but a feather bed piled high with blankets, and it was not cultists of Molag Bal holding her down, but Ayrenn, her battlereeve Urcelmo and Razum-dar, while two nameless Altmer in healer's robes hovered to the side.

She was not in Coldharbour, or Mannimarco's dungeon. She was... Vulkhel Guard, probably. She was not in a room she recognized, but it was Altmeri architecture and that alone soothed her more than Ayrenn's well-meant but meaningless murmurs of assurance as Kaylaneth looked around blearily.

Slowly, as Kaylaneth's breaths evened out, the three of them let go of her and backed away. One healer bustled forward to peer at Kaylaneth's cheek while the other carefully moved her aching arm — it had broken, she remembered dimly — from where it hung over the bed and back onto the pillow at her side.

The first healer, a pretty young — by Altmer standards — mer with large green eyes, dabbed at the cut closest to Kaylaneth's left eye. It stung, but then the girl put her other hand over the bottom three gouges and pumped Restoration magic into Kaylaneth. It was lovely, but over too soon: just enough to close the cuts, but not heal the damage beneath. Though Kaylaneth knew enough of Restoration to understand that too much tended to decrease the effectiveness of future healing magic and natural regeneration both, she still whined deep in her aching throat as the pain returned full force.

When she opened her eyes again, Razum-dar was examining his claws critically, looking between them and Kaylaneth's face. "This one apologizes," he said when he noticed her looking, and he did seem genuinely upset that he had hurt her.

"It's all right," she croaked. For now, it was. She would examine the damage to her face later, when all had been done that could be done. Whether she was disfigured or not, she would mourn as necessary and move on. She had never been a great beauty anyway by the standards of the Bosmer, and she had never expected to die without a single scar. Now she had at least two major ones. Perhaps another, depending on the state of her arm beneath the thick bandages...

"No, it's not," Ayrenn said quietly but firmly as the last of the blood was cleaned off her face. She gestured, and the healers bowed before slipping out.

The room seemed smaller, somehow, without them. Ayrenn was thrumming with a subtle anger, Kaylaneth realized, and at first she thought it was directed at Molag Bal, or the Daedra in general, for the attack, but then the queen crossed her arms, and came around the side of the bed. Looming over the Bosmer, Ayrenn leveled her with a look that would allow no lies, and said, far too calmly, "You died out there."

"What?" she croaked out before Ayrenn interrupted her with a snarl.

"Guildmaster Sees-All-Colors swore to me that you were dead. That you cracked your skull open on the anchor just before it was destroyed. And she was trying to figure out how to transport everyone back to town — how to transport the _corpses_ , when you suddenly started breathing again. Came back to life. And now you're sitting here and they tell me your head wound is gone."

Kaylaneth had stopped breathing at some point during the queen's tirade. She had _died?_ Impossible. She wouldn't feel so awful if she were a zombie, now would she? But... _Guildmaster Sees-All-Colors_ , she thought. _The Argonian in the golden armor who led the fighters, must be. Surely she would know a dead person if she saw one._

She could remember hitting her head, too. She reached around the back of her head, disbelieving, but while there were blood flakes in her hair that the healers had missed while they bathed her, there was no wound. Not even a scar. _What in Oblivion...?_

Queen Ayrenn returned to that deathly calm that scared Kaylaneth more than anything. "You talked in your sleep."

Kaylaneth hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about or what she could have said that was more important than the fact that she was alive. She wasn't a criminal, or a traitor, or even cared much for politics before she'd been dragged into Razum-dar's sphere of influence. (She still didn't, really.) She had never been one for worldly events like the Three Banners War, and had never dealt with Daedra until—

Oh. Her dreams. Or rather, her return in unconsciousness to the day she had been torn asunder. "I—"

"You _begged_ ," Ayrenn interrupted, "the God of Schemes to give you back your soul. What deal did you make with Molag Bal that you paid with your immortal soul?"

 _Oh_. She had never told Razum-dar how she ended up in the sea. And now, Ayrenn thought she was stupid enough to try to haggle with the King of Rape. It would have been funny, if it wasn't sad and insulting first. "I did no such thing!" she protested, too forcefully for she doubled over coughing as a result.

Ayrenn snatched a cup of water from the nightstand and held it out to Kaylaneth like the other mer was plagued. "Explain."

Kaylaneth wet her throat, coughed again, and sipped at the rest of the meager amount as she said, "I was taken. Against my will. And my soul, along with many others, was sacrificed to Molag Bal. So yes, I don't have a soul, but no, it was not by my own design. I don't know if I'm the only one who escaped or if there are more like me — you've never heard of people disappearing?" Ayrenn shook her head, expression still stony, and Kaylaneth sighed, looking down at her good hand fisted in the blankets. "There were so many sacrificed with me, and many more in the prisons while I was there. And Mannimarco said Molag Bal wanted souls—"

All three of them gasped as one when she said the Altmer cultist's name, and Kaylaneth glanced up again to find Ayrenn staring at her with something akin to disbelief creeping across her face. Leashed nervousness shrouded Urcelmo and Razum-dar... Raz had stepped back against the wall, tapping a claw against his chin and staring at the empty space past Kaylaneth's head with a faraway frown.

Ayrenn spoke first. "Mannimarco is sacrificing people to Molag Bal?"

"Yes. Cast the soul trap himself. _Stabbed me_ himself." She pulled down the flimsy dress — she couldn't see her armor or weapons anywhere — just enough to show the star-shaped scar on her chest.

"My Queen, we will need to investigate," said the battlereeve, averting his eyes as if he had just then realized Kaylaneth was female. And she hadn't even showed anything substantial. (She didn't _have_ anything substantial.) She was tempted, just for a moment, to show him just how many differences there were between Altmer and Bosmer senses of modesty, but fortunately for the Dominion, the temptation passed without incident.

Ayrenn nodded. "Yes. Aldmeri Dominion citizens being stolen away for such a terrible purpose is... troubling, to say the least."

Kaylaneth sank back into the pillows. Ayrenn believed her. Thank Y'ffre. She didn't want to think about what would have happened if the queen decided she was a threat.

"I wonder... if your lack of a soul makes you immortal somehow. I'm no scholar, but I do have a few ideas as to who to ask."

Kaylaneth found herself absurdly grateful that the queen wasn't going to try to find out by killing her again. That could be messy, and painful.

"Don't relax just yet, my Eye," Ayrenn warned, and Kaylaneth steeled herself for more difficult questions.

Sure enough, the queen wanted to know _everything_ about the theft of her soul. Kaylaneth drank a bit more water, unsure where to begin when she didn't know herself how it had begun. In the end, she settled for the plain truth. "I don't remember how I was captured, or even quite where. I was practicing my Dragonknight abilities on hoarvors and crocodiles around Southpoint, but between that and waking up in the dungeon is just... impressions. Glimpses. I think they took me into Cyrodiil."

"An impressive feat, to cross Valenwood without being seen..." Urcelmo mused.

Razum-dar hummed in thought. "Perhaps, perhaps not. If they were mages, not so difficult. If they had the patronage of Molag Bal, and even a bit of his wiles, easy."

Kaylaneth shrugged. She didn't know. There was so much she didn't know.


	4. Eyes Shut Tight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaylaneth's recovering from her violent death and rebirth in the infirmary of Vulkhel Guard. Molag Bal haunts her, but another face from her past is about to make a timely reappearance.
> 
> (last edited 6/30/16)

The healing passed slowly, unbearably so. Kaylaneth had always had a fear of being restrained, even if it wasn't with chains but with healer's orders. Even if it was for her own good.

Razum-dar stayed by her side for a few days, providing the merciful distraction she needed to avoid going insane from staring at the same room, being fussed over by the same two healers (whose names she never did learn) and eating the same vegetable-rich food (just because it wasn't from Valenwood and thus didn't violate the Pact didn't mean she had the stomach for it) day after sunless day. They became friends in that time, and though she learned absolutely nothing about him she didn't already know, she didn't mind because he always had such funny, if blush-inducing, jokes to tell, and he never let her linger on the absurd fear that she might never get to leave the room and taste the sea breeze again. He was good at that. It was as if he could sense it in her, though she never gave voice to it.

And then, one day while she was telling him about her fourth brother (he had turned it into a game: one brother a day ' _until you run out of them_ ', as he had said, and she'd laughed even as she swatted him on the arm), there was a knock on the door. Raz grinned at her and winked before he answered it, and though she could not hear what was said, if anything, Raz had an envelope in his hands when he turned back.

"Ah, perhaps Raz has charmed some lovely lady off her feet, hmm? He does not recognize this script." He peered at his own name written on the front of the thin envelope for a moment, still smiling faintly, and then he split the seal with a claw and removed the single square piece of paper within.

The smile froze to his face until it became a grimace, and when he looked up from the paper a moment later — _a short message_ , Kaylaneth thought, _what could have been said in such brief words?_ — it was with fear that he did not bother to hide in front of the Bosmer. "I must go," he said shortly, all traces of joviality gone.

"Raz!" she cried out, but he just pulled open the door and stepped out. "For the queen," he said, turning back to her. He clicked the door shut; did not wait for her to echo the oath-statement.

She did, though. Quietly, to the empty room, but she did. She understood. They both had jobs to do. His was to attend his queen immediately; that he had chosen that phrase as his goodbye told her as much. Her job was to get well first so she wouldn't die pathetically if her mace-arm twinged while she was fighting off threats to the Dominion.

Laying back again and resigning herself to however long it took, Kaylaneth remembered the Maormer camp she had discovered and cursed at herself for forgetting the very thing that had set off this whole Queen's Eyes thing in the first place.

“Healer?” she called, but her voice cracked — she hadn’t quite recovered from the screaming, and only time and the gods could tell whether she ever would — and she swallowed before trying again. This one was stronger, surely strong enough to reach past the door at least, but she couldn’t tell whether anyone was beyond until—

The door cracked open, and the younger, female healer poked her head in. Worry was lining her face, and Kaylaneth could have sworn there were crow’s feet around her eyes where there had been only smooth skin before. “Yes?”

A twinge of guilt — that worry was not directed at her — but Kaylaneth forged ahead. “There— there were Maormer massing on the beach to the west. Preparing for an attack. I rescued a sailor they had taken captive just before Queen Ayrenn arrived in the city." The healer opened her mouth, but Kaylaneth rushed on, concerned about how it would sound that she had delayed this long to get the news out. "I tried to tell Astanya, but I suppose you can guess how that went. I'm sorry — in the chaos I completely forgot!" Her voice cracked again at the end, and a coughing fit overtook her.

When she had wiped the tears from her eyes a minute later, the healer had come completely into the room, and was joined by her coworker. The other healer was an anxious older mer with an impressive beard for an Altmer, whose words were short and sharp. His hands, though, were gentle.

"Kaylaneth," he said, shaking his head like he was about to give her bad news. Her heart fluttered. "They're gone. A passing trader saw at least ten of their battleships moored there two days ago, and alerted the guard."

"The guard? There must have been hundreds of the vipers, and more in the ships. How could we get a force big enough to take them on in so sort a time?" Kaylaneth didn't know much about the military of Auridon, but she did know the city didn't have nearly enough guards in it. They'd have had to march from Skywatch... A week's journey at least.

"We didn't," he said. Both of the healers looked haunted. "Scouts went out, and found Maormer all right. Dead Maormer. Every last one — even on the ships. No sign of what did it except for the burns on the bodies, I hear. The mages think that when the anchor dropped, several other Daedric portals opened directly over the camp and the ships and the Maormer weren't prepared."

Kaylaneth felt sick. Not that the Maormer had been slaughtered, as she knew they had been an invasion force and would have done worse to _them_ in time. No, it was that if it could happen to hundreds of armed and fit mer, it could happen to towns and cities full of civilians. She pictured the devastation and a full-body shudder ran through her. Oh, _gods_.

"May they protect us in these trials," said the female healer, and Kaylaneth realized she had spoken her half-formed prayer out loud. "Excuse me, must go help with our other patient." She slipped out.

The older healer just grunted and came over to peel off Kaylaneth's facial bandages, nodding in approval at the rate Razum-dar's clawmarks were healing. "You're lucky. They'll scar, but not as badly as I thought." He moved to her arm as Kaylaneth let a long breath out through her nose. She didn't feel terribly lucky, though she knew she was on a base level. It had occurred to her after the queen left for Tanzelwil again that the monarch would probably have more than a few uses for an agent that couldn't die permanently; assuming of course that it was a trait of being soulless and not a one-time deal. She wasn't looking forward to it. Her non-fatal injuries were still an issue, as was the pain and the fear upon waking.

"This arm will be weak for a while," the old healer said after poking at it for a long time. "But you've been on bed rest long enough. Should have been up and about earlier than this, but I've never dealt with your... condition before. Didn't know what to expect. Still don't." It was the longest speech he'd made that wasn't barking orders at his junior coworker.

"Thank you," Kaylaneth said softly, and wiggled her fingers. Her arm _was_ weak, indeed. It felt better than she could have expected, though as a non-healer she could only make wild guesses about things like that.

"If you would like to wander the halls, you may. Don't go far though, and don't bother anyone. I'll get you some clothes."

He ducked out, leaving Kaylaneth to wonder where her armor was. If it was ruined, she didn't know how she was going to replace it.

When the clothes arrived, they were in the hands of the younger female healer. She helped Kaylaneth into the corseted dress, a soft green number in the Altmer style that was only two inches too long. It had likely once been a young maiden's. Kaylaneth was just happy the thing wouldn't trip her up too terribly until she could get armor.

She was a little stiff in her joints when she stood up and shuffled the few steps to the door, but she quickly hit her stride as she crossed the threshold to the main part of the building. She didn't recognize the rest of the interior, either; when she paused to look out a window, though, she saw the Temple gardens and realized she was on the upper floor of the Manor House. She hadn't known there was an infirmary within when Astanya had arrested her on the doorstep.

She was wandering towards a bookshelf, keeping her steps slow lest her muscles twinge, when a commotion attracted her attention. Muffled shouting was coming from whence she came, and as Kaylaneth looked over curiously, the young healer burst from the room next to the one she had stayed in and rushed past, a panicked look on her face. Kaylaneth caught sight of a mass of Altmer in healer's robes struggling with what must have been a patient inside the other sickbay. Though the troublesome person wasn't visible, Kaylaneth could hear his shouts over the others. His voice sounded familiar...

"Guard!" the female healer called, leaning over the balcony that opened to the first floor. "We need help up here!" Without waiting for an answer, the healer ran back into the room, leaving the door open in her haste to join the fray. Kaylaneth shuffled closer to the chaos on the pretense of heading back to her own bed. That voice was nagging at her, like she should have recognized it immediately.

Two mer in the garb of the Vulkhel Watch stormed up the stairs from below and past Kaylaneth, knocking aside the healers to grab the protesting man — for it was a man, not a mer — and shove him to the floor. Kaylaneth saw a flash of gray hair, pale skin, and empty white eyes wide with fear before his head was pushed down and a guard knelt on his back.

 _Oh no,_ Kaylaneth thought, and she was moving forward before she was aware of commanding her legs to move. She stumbled at the doorframe, leaning against it for a moment and trying to get her ragged breathing to slow; but it was no use, because she knew who the man was. She pushed past the swarming healers and knelt by his head, ignoring the guards who demanded her business.

"What happened?" she gasped, reaching out to stroke the Prophet's cheek.

He was a mess. His hair, though not lustrous by any means when he had been in the Wailing Prison, was even lanker and greasier than before. His hands trembled where they were curled under him. Where her hand touched his face, she could feel the layers of dirt, dust and grime embedded in his skin. A deep, sickly-sallow gash was on his forehead, and the fear was so deep in him she couldn't tell if he recognized her presence or not. Until his breaths slowed and he tried to lift his head, to sit up.

"Get off him," she said quietly, not taking her eyes off the heart-wrenching figure.

Miraculously, the guards obeyed, letting the Imperial sit up and moving as respectful a distance away as was possible in the small room.

Kaylaneth moved her hand down to take one of his, squeezing it gently. "Prophet?"

"You are..." he croaked, voice feeble from shouting. "...Vestige...?"

"That is what you called me, yes," she said, relieved that he remembered her. "Please, Prophet. What happened?"

"I do not know. I remember Lyris, and you, but after..." He trailed off, brow furrowing. "Where am I?"

Kaylaneth didn't know if any of the others knew her past, and she didn't relish the thought of explaining it again. She seized on the new topic. "Vulkhel Guard, Auridon, Summerset Isles. You're in a sickbay. Why were you fighting these healers?"

"I woke up as they were carrying me... I did not know where I was. I thought..." Kaylaneth squeezed his hand, and he trailed off again. "My apologies, good healers."

"It is no issue, sir," said a middle-aged female Altmer that Kaylaneth didn't know. "Perhaps I can fill some gaps for you. Do you need help getting off the floor?"

He did, in fact, but Kaylaneth insisted on being the one to help him up and onto the bed. The other healers filed out, as did the guards. When there were just the three of them, Valinya introduced herself. She was one of the most skilled healers in the world, and the founder and head of Vulkhel Guard's one and only infirmary. (Though the Mage's Guild did do experiments with restoration magic, that hardly counted, as Valinya explained with a derisive sniff.) She was very proud of her accomplishments, of course.

When Kaylaneth's impatience began to show on her face despite her best efforts, the Altmer swerved back to the matter at hand. "Ahem. Yes. The guards who brought you in told me a beachcomber found you on the other side of the eastern seawall. It appeared you washed up at high tide. You were unconscious, but the guards managed to wake you briefly. You were delirious, they said."

"Delirious?" The Prophet had regained some of his senses, but he still looked so ragged and pathetic that Kaylaneth hated to let his hand go. But she did, trusting that he knew not to mention Coldharbour or Molag Bal. It would just cause problems they didn't need. "Did I say anything?" He said it casually, and inwardly Kaylaneth let out a relieved sigh.

"Well, they said they could not understand most of your words, but one stood out. _Vestige_." Her eyes flicked over to Kaylaneth, perched on a chair by the bedside. So Valinya had been paying attention earlier. No matter.

The Prophet nodded, and his face clouded over. While he thought, Kaylaneth asked the healer about his condition.

"Dehydrated, no doubt." Valinya indicated the jug by the bedside, and, without breaking his reverie, the Prophet reached for it. "There might also be damage to his mind, whether from exposure or hitting his head. We will find out after he bathes." Her long, pointed nose scrunched up for just a moment, just long enough for Kaylaneth to decide that, despite her attempts at a professional demeanor, Valinya was as much a snob about dirt as the stereotypical Altmer.

Kaylaneth said nothing, however, just hummed her acknowledgment.

"A bath would be nice," the Prophet said slowly. It broke Kaylaneth's heart to see him so changed. He had been a sharp wit trapped in the body of a frail old man in the Wailing Prison. Now he had a mind to match the body.

Kaylaneth was reluctant to leave, to go back to her room and stew until the Prophet was better and able to talk to her, but she knew she had to if she wanted to get answers. To move forward. And that was the big picture, wasn't it? She had to know where to go, what to do. She couldn't be stagnant as an Eye of the Queen while Molag Bal loomed above them. He would turn all their efforts, all their petty disagreements, even the Three Banners War, to dust and ashes.

She was starkly reminded of ants, working tirelessly on things that didn't matter to the men and mer in the world above. Was that what Molag Bal would reduce them to?

~*~*~*~

By the time the Prophet was bathed, settled, and (as Valinya told her) fast asleep, Kaylaneth had thoroughly explored every inch of the upper floor of the Manor House. She found a mirror in the west wing of the enormous building, in what had once been a bedroom. It hadn't been used as such in a long time, as evidenced by the white sheets over everything and the thick layer of dust over the sheets. Kaylaneth found it strange that every other room had a current use while this one languished under the march of time.

With the feeling she was disturbing more than dust, she pulled the sheet off the large standing mirror and promptly doubled over into a fit of sneezes as the layers and layers of gray powder were propelled into the air. When her eyes stopped watering, she took a step back to peer at — and into — the looking glass.

Kaylaneth felt like a miner unearthing a fist-sized diamond. The mirror was a beautiful antique; the silver frame was wrought into flowers, leaves and curling tendrils around the flawless surface. The glass itself had not lost its reflective power, either. Within it Kaylaneth could see the room behind her, and the summer sunlight peeking around the heavy curtains. She saw herself, too, of course: a young Bosmer who barely came halfway up the mirror, fidgeting at the sleeves of her borrowed dress. Her hair, normally bound in a tight braid, was fraying from its confines and sticking up every which way, and Kaylaneth spent a moment trying to smooth it down before giving up and drifting closer to the mirror.

Her face.

Five angry red lines ran across her cheek. They stood out sharply on her light brown skin, contrasting with the freckles scattered across her upturned nose. Under the new scars, her cheek was still a bit puffy, but she imagined it had been much, much worse just a few days before.

She pulled at the bags under her dark brown eyes, then checked that the miniature antlers on her forehead — another inheritance from her mother — weren't covered in the thick fuzz that signaled they would grow bigger. The last thing she needed was them to be more noticeable. At least most of her absurdly tall cousins seemed not to see them, being the same color as her hair. She knew other Bosmer envied her for the delicate prongs, but she wasn't with other Bosmer.

Perhaps she would let her hair down. She liked having it out of her face, though. She knew she needed to cut it as well.

With a sigh, she undid her braid, letting the slightly curly waves fall over her shoulders and down her back. Her antlers were less visible than before. She knew she looked even more like a helpless waif with her hair down — but her mother had always told her it was a blessing to be overlooked and underestimated, because she would prove her critics wrong and her enemies unaware.

 _Mother._ Kaylaneth's chest ached, and she just wanted to go home.

 _Soon, love. Soon._ Her mother's imagined voice, gentle and full of promise, echoed in her mind as Kaylaneth pulled the sheet back over the beautiful mirror and left the room that everybody but Auriel had forgotten.


	5. On The Edge Of Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mysteries keep piling up, but Kaylaneth's got to be moving on. Onward to Skywatch, the city that celebrates while neighbors become traitors and a storm brews on the doorstep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : The violence goes up a notch at the end of this chapter. In addition, there is a brief and vague bathroom reference, fantastic racism (but you knew that; it's not TES without some racial tension at least and ESO brought it to eleven), mentions of murder and cannibalism, and Kaylaneth with a death wish. Honestly, I'm wondering where I pulled all her angst from.
> 
> Also this thing is over twice as long as the last one. Phew.
> 
>  
> 
> _Edited for history fail - the Ayleids likely never had much to do with Summerset, much less built any sites there to later become ruins. The ruins on Auridon are almost certainly Aldmer, and might only look so similar to Ayleid ruins for convenience. Thus, references to Ayleid architecture has been removed._

"So, my dear," said the Prophet, seeming to look directly at her (he did this a lot, making her paranoid that he could see after all), "Madame Valinya discovered more information about my condition." He said it calmly, but Kaylaneth was under no illusions that the news was good. Though, the Imperial seemed to have recovered more of his faculties in the day since Kaylaneth had seen him last. She hadn't been sitting with him for very long, however, so she wasn't sure she had gotten the whole picture. Sitting up in bed with an inn's worth of pillows propped behind his back, wrinkled but clean hands cupped around a mug of tea, he certainly looked stronger than before.

"What happened to you?" Kaylaneth asked cautiously.

He was shaking his head before she had even finished the sentence. "I still do not know exactly what transpired in that time— how long has it been, anyway?"

Kaylaneth did a quick accounting of days. "Three and a half weeks by my count. Razum-dar said he fished me out of the water, half-drowned, three hours before the hurricane..." At his confused look, she added, "I'll tell you later. You were saying?"

The Prophet took a sip of his tea. "So much time... Well, I still have no answers as to where I was between the escape and washing up on the beach. That is gone. The last thing I remember is the light enveloping me as I went through the portal. Then the healers. I wonder..." He hummed thoughtfully as Kaylaneth tried and failed to school her face into a patient look. "Madame Valinya told me my memory loss could be caused by mundane means — the head trauma or a reflex to trauma of a different sort, though what could have been horrible enough to make me block it out neither of us can guess — or magical."

"Someone could have cast a spell on you to make you forget?" Kaylaneth wasn't surprised she'd never heard of such an thing. Her knowledge of magic beyond the Dragonknight abilities — which came to her as naturally as breathing — was woefully poor.

"Someone or something. It is not unheard of for certain artifacts of Hermaeus Mora to erase memories by merely being in their presence. Madame Valinya found something that might be a clue." He gestured her closer, drawing down the shoulder of his flimsy robe and turning away from her so she could look at his upper back.

Kaylaneth recoiled at first, but soon found herself less than a foot away, peering at the strange pattern of dull red pockmarks across the age-spotted skin of the Prophet's back. They looked like burns, but they were tiny, perfectly circular, and there were dozens of them. "Do they hurt?" was the first thing she could think to ask, even as she reached out to run her finger, feather-light, over one.

"Not at all," the Prophet replied, staying still until her hand withdrew, then reclining against the pillows again. "The healers are apparently on a hunt to find out what could have caused them. It is a mystery unlike any they have encountered before, Madame Valinya said. I believe they have turned it into a kind of contest." His lips quirked into a tiny smile. "In any case, that is all they could find to give a hint. However, I am told that sometimes lost memories will return if given enough time. The Canonreeve has given permission for me to stay in the city for as long as I need."

Kaylaneth let out a relieved sigh. "That's good news."

"Indeed, my dear. Now, Vestige, what have you been doing in the last month? You mentioned a hurricane."

With a barking laugh, she told him with the entire story. It took the better part of an hour, and he didn't interrupt once, just sipped his tea. "...I'm glad Razum-dar stayed as long as he could," she said at the end of what she knew was a rambling and often unfocused tale. She'd never had Y'ffre's gift of spinning. "He's a good friend."

The Prophet smiled at that, a look in his blind eyes that she couldn't fathom at the moment. "I suspect this Veiled Heritance is a bigger threat than it seems. I will be resting on my laurels here for a while, so if you need to leave to check up on your Queen, I would not fault you for it. In fact, I think it would do you good to travel. You seem stressed."

Kaylaneth blinked, considering. "Are you sure you'll be fine?"

He smiled again. "Yes, I am in good hands here. Go, my dear. It will be good for you."

"Oh, all right. But if anything happens, be sure to write, okay? Er..." It was easy to forget he was blind, sometimes.

The Prophet waved a hand, dismissing the matter. "I know what you meant. If something should arise, I will either have someone write or contact you directly with a projection. Be safe, Kaylaneth."

"I'm not leaving just yet. I have to get cleared to travel, get supplies, armor..." She stood up and bid him good day, telling him she would be back for a proper farewell if all went smoothly. As she shut the door behind her, she realized it was the first time he had called her by her name.

~*~*~*~

Valinya gave her blessing for Kaylaneth to leave at her earliest convenience, then told her that her armor's repairs should be completed.

"Free of charge," the blacksmith said when the Bosmer got down to the marketplace. "You're an Eye — it comes out of the treasury." That was certainly convenient. Her armor and shield had been reinforced, too, and her mace checked for structural damage.

Her steps light as they had not been in a long time, Kaylaneth prepared for her journey quickly but thoroughly. Doubtlessly the entourage had moved on from Tanzelwil, so she would head to Skywatch and go from there. A town crier in the marketplace had announced a High Kinlady Estre was being honored in a big festival in Skywatch by Ayrenn herself. Hopefully she would still be there when Kaylaneth arrived, or someone would know the next stop.

Auridon was certainly a beautiful island. The first half of the journey was as pleasant as could be: the weather held fair, and though she encountered no guard patrols on the winding roads, she wasn't bothered by anything worse than inquisitive bumblebees and butterflies. While she walked she cycled through all the tunes she could remember her mother or the occasional bard traveling through Southpoint singing. Her mother, whose voice could charm crocodiles, had taught Kaylaneth many of the old songs, hoping her other talent would also be passed on. But it was no use. Kaylaneth could sing passably, but it was only passably. Here, however, with none to hear but the ancient-looking, ever-blooming trees, she sang and hummed and even whistled every song she knew.

She hardly needed the small tent she'd bought, as the nights were as warm as the days. She rested when she was tired, ate when she was hungry, and basked in her solitude. Some mer would have hated never meeting another being on the road for days and days, but Kaylaneth had grown up with a full house and almost no privacy. She took every chance at a little peace she could.

Finally, as she neared Mathiisen, she started seeing travelers. At first it was just one or two, and then one or two more an hour later. They passed in silence, but after half a day had gone by of this pattern, she encountered her first large group. Kaylaneth stopped as they approached, peering at and studying them. Mostly Altmer, a few Bosmer and Khajiit, even one human. They were all on foot, and all had the appearance of those who had packed up in a hurry. They weren't in rags, nor had haunted looks, so Kaylaneth was thoroughly confused as to whether they were refugees or not.

"Hail!" she called, starting towards them.

The group stopped, letting her come right up. It occurred to Kaylaneth they might be particularly clever bandits, but it was too late then.

"Do you come from Mathiisen?"

An Altmer in the back came forward, the others parting for him. "Yes, miss."

Kaylaneth focused on him. "Is it safe there?"

"For us, no. For a fresh face, perhaps. There's been some... upheaval there, and we fear implication in plots not our own." The mer spoke slowly and carefully, as if he was wary of her. Her! He dwarfed her by a foot at least.

She reminded herself that her own mother had taught her to be underwhelming on purpose, the better to surprise enemies looking for easy pickings. From a few more delicate inquiries, she learned that Razum-dar (or at least a Khajiit who matched his description) had been in the town, and had exposed the Canonreeve herself as a Veiled Heritance officer, along with the forgemaster, who ran the town's biggest industry. Both were now dead. The corruption was deep though, and now the people were fleeing the town in anticipation of a wave of investigations and finger-pointing. A new Canonreeve hadn't been appointed yet, and the town was in chaos.

Kaylaneth marveled at how fast Raz moved as she thanked the mer for his information and moved on. She had enough supplies to skip Mathiisen altogether, she thought. The rabbits had been plentiful, and though she had not used a bow in years, the skill came back quicker than she had expected. Even if she could survive without visiting, she was curious as to the state of the town. It wasn't _that_ far out of the way.

Had she had just let Veiled Heritance members pass her by, though? Kaylaneth reassured herself with the knowledge that if she had confronted them, or revealed her identity, and they had been Heritance, she wouldn't have survived the encounter. Better to live to fight another day. Probably.

In any case, the Prophet had been right. She had a very bad feeling now about how widespread the shadowy group must be.

When she arrived, Mathiisen was either deserted, or the remaining people were doing a great job of hiding. No one, not even guards, were in sight. Kaylaneth stood on the bridge leading into the town for a few minutes, hands on her hips, and listened to the breeze rustling the trees behind her and the water lapping at the shore below. "Well, that was a waste of time," she said to the empty town. With a shrug, she turned around and resumed the long walk to Skywatch.

~*~*~*~

"You want me to infiltrate the Veiled Heritance?" Kaylaneth raised both eyebrows. But she felt more dread than incredulity — dread that Razum-dar had this plan in the first place, dread that he would convince her with his charm, dread that any manner of things that could go wrong would. "You do know they're an _Altmer_ supremacy group, right?"

"Have no fear, shorty elf," said the Khajiit, winking at her to indicate he didn't mean the insult, though Kaylaneth had never had a complex about her height like some Bosmer. "Raz has thought about that."

They were sitting in a secluded corner of an open-air cafe in Skywatch, surrounded by bushes on three sides. Raz was pretending to sip some wine, as usual, while Kaylaneth had no such restrictions. At least, she thought she didn't. There was a Bosmer brewer hawking her wares nearby, but having been raised in a mostly-Colovian town, Kaylaneth hadn't developed much of a taste for rotmeth or jagga. Instead she buried her nose in a mug of brandy.

Raz was out of uniform for the first time she'd seen, instead wearing a looser tunic dyed to match his mohawk. He looked... different. Less harsh, more approachable. She wondered whether he was good-looking to the average Khajiit, with the sun on his fur and a sparkle in his bright eyes.

The brandy was getting to her, she realized just as Raz burst out laughing. "This is why Raz does not drink on the job, hmm?"

"What? What did I— ohhh." It had been too long since she had put one back; she had no tolerance anymore.

"But as to your question, Raz believes his appeal is more in his personality and intelligence than in his looks. Don't you?" He winked at her again as she buried her head in her hands. "Come, let us find an alchemist. A _discrete_ one. Actually, I think one of our colleagues dabbles in potions for when drunk Eyes are called to duty..." As he spoke, he hauled her up — by Y'ffre, he was _strong_ — and pulled her away to the manor, leaving their drinks abandoned on the table.

The 'discrete alchemist' turned out to be a Bosmer who heard what Kaylaneth had been drinking and couldn't stop chuckling, even as she mixed up the potion that would flush the alcohol from her system. It was disgusting to look at and to drink, but when Raz threatened to pin her down and pour it in her throat, she managed.

Kaylaneth spent the next hour hovering over a chamber pot.

"Okay, okay, I'm sober," she moaned when she emerged, clutching her stomach. She felt like all the fluid in her body was gone. The glass of water a smirking Raz handed her eased her cramps, though, and soon she was huddled with the Khajiit again, listening to him explain the plan.

An enchanted ring would cause her to look like an Altmer woman as long as it was on her finger. That was yet another thing about magic she hadn't known, but a glance in one of the many mirrors in the manor convinced her the illusion was not only passable, but immaculate. She was almost unbelievably beautiful as an Altmer, she thought as she examined herself. Her expressions and movements transferred flawlessly to her Altmer-self. There was a weird consequence of the illusion, however, and that was that she in actuality remained the exact same height she was before, and the top eleven inches of her reflection in the mirror was just empty space when she passed her hand through it. The illusion rippled in the mirror as she touched it, like a reflection in a pond.

"Weird," she murmured, and turned to Raz. "Well, I suppose you also have a plan to get into the Heritance?"

He did, and it involved leaving the city with the ring in her pocket, finding a secluded spot to slip it on, and returning to the city. She had a bogus writ of passage for the guard captain to get her through the gate, and wandered around the city as a tourist for an hour, establishing her presence, before poking her way down to the docks and into the tavern where her contact waited. She panicked for a moment when she realized Raz hadn't told her which of the many people in the establishment was the contact. The barkeep directed her to an Altmer by the stairs — and boy, was he _shady_ — when she spoke the pass-phrase (as casually as she could with her heart trying to force its way out her throat).

She tried not to show her trepidation on her face. She was not cut out for this, had never been trained for this in her life. But it was too late, for Palomir — the dubious-looking Altmer — had seen her and was watching her with interest. _Too late, too late,_ she thought desperately even as she repeated, "the wine here is made with Alik'r grapes," and was surprised by how steady her voice was.

"Welcome, sister," he purred with a voice that was like bugs crawling on her skin. "Are you certain you wish to wear the Veil?"

"Of course," she replied. "I would not be here if it were not so." She suspected confidence would get her farther in this organization of racists and traitors than anything else.

He smiled, and she repressed a shiver at the sight of those teeth. They were not rotten, as she had expected, but pearly white and disconcertingly charming compared to the rest of him. "Good. Your first test, to prove your dedication, is to kill a guard of Skywatch. Bring me their sword. The standard-issue one."

"Very well," she said, even as she cringed inwardly. Doubtlessly the Heritance had eyes all over the city, and would know if she contacted Razum-dar to get a sword without bloodshed. But she couldn't kill a guard. She just couldn't.

"Oh, and sister?" Palomir called as she turned on her heel and made to leave. "Make it good."

Her face twisted in disgust, but she turned it into a sneer in the nick of time. "Of course." She left as quickly as could be excusable. That confirmed it. They were watching her.

She emerged from the tavern feeling vaguely ill again, and the feeling only intensified when she saw the guard posted at the bottom of the stairs leading to the city proper. She swallowed heavily as she passed him by, only relaxing when she was in the expansive gardens in front of the manor. She found a relatively hidden corner made by the hedges and sat down, trying to think. The whole situation was ridiculous. She couldn't do this. Even now, were they were watching her?

"Psst, shorty elf!" came a voice from nearby. It sounded like...

"Raz?" she hissed back, sitting up. Her disguise was still on. _It better be Raz_ , she thought, _or I am well and truly screwed_. 

"Who else? Raz has come to save the day." He emerged from the bushes, back in uniform and grinning at her.

She stared back at him, panic swelling in her chest.

Raz cocked his head to the side. "What is wrong? You are not happy to see me?"

"I— Raz, get out of here! If we're seen together—"

"Do not worry, Raz has it all covered!" He produced a golden earring from a pocket of his armor. He clipped it to his ear and started to shimmer. Kaylaneth blinked and in that instant, Razum-dar was in the guise of a guard captain, complete with sword. "Raz came in this way. He would not abandon you to an impossible choice, friend. Though, he apologizes for not realizing sooner they would set this test to you." It was odd, hearing Raz's voice coming from what appeared to be an Altmer guard's mouth.

"What is the plan?" she said desperately, daring to hope.

"Simple. You take this sword that Raz so conveniently brought with him," he handed her a very real blade, "you wrap it in linen—" he produced this item as well, "—so that the actual guards do not get suspicious as you leave. Raz waits here until all eyes are off him, takes off this bauble, and by the time the Heritance realizes there is no body, we will both be long gone. Deal?"

Ten minutes later Kaylaneth burst through the doors of the Barbed Hook Tavern, dragging the heavy longsword with her. The patrons glanced at her, but none seemed surprised when she approached Palomir and unwrapped her burden.

"Good, good," he murmured as he examined the sword, then set it on a nearby table. "That was fast. Nice job not getting caught."

"I do not get caught," she huffed, wondering if she was overplaying her haughty Altmer persona.

"We'll see. Caledeen! The special brew for our new recruit, please."

 _Special brew?_ It was undoubtedly drugged, or maybe poisoned. Drugged, preferably, but she could only go forward no matter how much her gut churned. "You know, you don't need to—" she started, but a mug was thrust into her hand and the look on Palomir's face told her to shut up and drink.

She did, and within moments the world was spinning and she was falling back. She was out before she hit the floor.

~*~*~*~

Vague impressions of memories floated at the edge of her awareness. They scuttled away before she could grasp them, but then she was coming into the present. She felt... cradled, somehow, rocking back and forth. Gradually, she started to hear the call of the seabirds, and the lapping of waves right by her head. The smell of the ocean was almost overpowering.

She opened her eyes to find herself lying on the bottom of a rowboat tied to a dock. She peered up at the pink sky for a moment, then lifted her head to find Palomir crouched on the dock by her feet. He stood up as she looked at him, but he didn't stop watching her.

 _I am alive,_ she realized with relief. And apparently her disguise hadn't slipped, if she wasn't in a dungeon somewhere. Her shield and mace were even lying next to her in the boat. She sat up, reaching for them.

"You know," Palomir said thoughtfully, "I didn't get your name."

This, at least, was one test she could pass with ease. Her Altmer name was Alcalime, she and Razum-dar had decided. It was uncommon enough not to sound like an alias, yet common enough to be feasible for her apparent age.

Palomir's face didn't change when she told him, he just gestured for her to get out of the boat. As she did, moving slowly as not to fall — no sea-legs still — he surprised her by holding out a hand for her to get out of the rowboat. When she was steady, he gestured towards the shore, and she got her first good look at where she was.

It was a mid-size island dotted with ancient arches and swarming with Altmer. Veiled Heritance recruits and officers, no doubt. Some were milling about, some appeared to be training. A group of three on the left beach were picking off the mudcrabs with magic, laughing at every spark and sizzle of crab-flesh.

A shiver ran up Kaylaneth's spine.

"Nervous?" Palomir said from behind her, and, without turning around, she spoke the lie:

"Excited."

"Good," he said, seeming pleased though she was not looking at him. "Here's the second test." He brought her through the arch at the end of the dock and turned right, where several Altmer stood in a line before an altar. They were each touching the back soul gem that stood on the altar in turn; some kind of ritual.

"You will pledge your soul to the Veiled Queen," said Palomir from behind her.

For a moment Kaylaneth's heart seized in horror. Then she remembered — there was no soul to pledge. Not for her. "Always," she murmured, watching carefully so she would know how to act. Presumably the soul gem wouldn't affect her like it would the others, but she had to act like it did.

When it came time, she prepared her show using her observations: touch the stone, gasp as if she'd been dunked in freezing water, back away shaking her hand like it had been shocked. The actual act of touching the stone, for her, only produced a slight tingle in her hand, but she played her part and Palomir bought it as far as she could tell. Luckily he didn't ask her what it was like, because other than the outward display she hadn't a clue.

"Here is where I leave you," Palomir said as they walked deeper into the snake nest. Ahead was a redheaded Altmer with a well-trimmed beard and mustache, standing by a long, curved table with all sorts of random objects lined up on it. "There are three more tests. After you complete them, you will be an officer. Should you fail, you're a recruit until you can prove yourself in another way. Good luck, whether you need it or not." He gestured to the redhead, who was now scratching something on a slip of parchment while scowling. He certainly looked imposing — _those eyebrows_ — but Kaylaneth approached anyway. She was a bit reluctant to leave Palomir, absurdly. She knew he was a recruiter for a very dangerous — and, it appeared, larger than she had expected — group, but he was the only person here she even knew the name of.

That problem was rectified immediately when the redhead sensed her approach and looked up. "Ah, a new recruit. My name is Ohmonir, proctor of the test of intelligence. You are here for that, I presume?" His eyes slid past her, over her shoulder, and she knew he must have been looking at Palomir. "Yes. Good." He set the piece of parchment aside, laying it upside down, but tapped the feather of the quill against his lips. His eyebrows dipped even further down as he thought. "All right. There are two riddles. They each refer to a different object on the table behind me. Be sure to know the options before you choose. Ready?"

She opened her mouth, moving towards the table to get a closer look, but apparently it had been a rhetorical question. Ohmonir started talking again, and it took a second for her to realize that _this_ was the riddle.

"Two bodies have I, two joined into one, the more I stand still the faster I run. I flip on my head, some watch me with dread." There was a pause, then Ohmonir added, "What am I?"

Kaylaneth closed her eyes. She had never considered herself that intelligent. Cleverness was her brothers' domain, cleverness, improvisation and probably spywork too. She desperately missed them. Hopefully one or two would be in Southpoint visiting when she returned, but for the moment she thought of what they would do. How they would think. _Use any clues you can get, La-La,_ whispered a voice that sounded suspiciously like her second-eldest brother, when he was a teenager and was certain he knew everything. She pushed aside the fact that she had conjured up his voice saying things he had never said (though he, and everyone else, _had_ called her the dreaded nickname well into her adulthood).

 _Clues_. She had options, at least: she didn't think many riddle-games involved a finite number of possible answers. She wondered how easy it was to become an officer.

Before that tangent could distract her, she opened her eyes and examined the first object. A fat tallow candle. She picked it up, set it down. That wasn't it. Next, what was very obviously the skull of a Khajiit. She swallowed, running the riddle through her head to avoid turning around and bashing Ohmonir's own skull in with her mace. The macabre thing didn't fit either, so she moved on. A sword and a shield were the next two items, and then she saw it out of the corner of her eye: an hourglass. It fit the riddle exactly, so she turned around, finding Ohmonir had his arms crossed, watching her impatiently. "The hourglass," she said flatly.

"Correct. Next riddle. I attend every battle. I attend every duel. My tooth is sharp. My swing is cruel." Another pause. "What am I?"

 _Well, that's an easy one._ Kaylaneth pointed to the sword wordlessly.

"Sword. Correct." His voice took on a bored affectation. "You have passed the test of intelligence. The next test, endurance, is run by Varustante. You may find her by the standing stones to the north."

~*~*~*~

The next two tests were back to back. Usually decimating the other candidates would have been no issue, but she was exhausted from the run around the island. She hadn't expected the imps trying to fry her as she ran, either. Though she wasn't in top form for either trial (her walk to Skywatch had helped, but hadn't completely reversed the effects of days in a bed), she managed to squeak through.

Now she stood at the top of a long, steep staircase leading down into the depths, the ancient stone door closing like a coffin lid behind her. She breathed deep to calm herself, but only ended up with a lungful of dust.

And she'd thought the Temple of the Mourning Springs oppressive, she remembered as she descended the narrow passageway. Most of the stairs were crumbling at the edge, forcing her to turn her feet sideways. The last thing she needed was to go tumbling down and break something. Interesting how a mer-occupied ruin was in worse shape than an abandoned one filled with giant bats.

As she neared the bottom — she could finally _see_ the bottom, and the unnatural light spilling from the room beyond — she started hearing the murmur of a conversation. Another deep breath. She was doing fine.

Plastering on a cocky grin that hurt her face, Kaylaneth stepped into the cavernous space. Four young Altmer sat chatting around the central fire where a boar turned slowly over the flames. Kaylaneth glanced around as she approached, noting the large door to the left that probably led deeper into the ruins, and the weapons scattered around the right side of the room. Her footsteps echoed far too loudly above the conversation, but she resisted the urge to walk quieter. For all intents and purposes, she was an Altmer now, not a light-footed child of the graht-bark.

Three of the four raised their heads at the sound. Of those three, two smiled. Of those two, one leapt up and rushed forward to meet her.

"You must be Alcalime!" The exuberant young man with the freckles — unusual for an Altmer, and Kaylaneth rather suspected he had some Bosmeri blood in him somewhere — was smiling so widely his mouth took up half his face, eyes sparkling with unrestrained, honest joy that Kaylaneth couldn't figure out the reason for. "The higher-ups told us there'd be another new officer joining us at the last minute. They said you beat the strength test in record time!"

No one had told _her_ that. Alandare, the proctor of the last test, had seemed wholly unimpressed and annoyed that Kaylaneth had won. Perhaps it was because she had nearly coughed up a lung on the traitor after, due to exhaustion. But Kaylaneth kept her face snooty. "All in a day's work."

"Oooh, a cold one. You'll go far. All the really really high up people are so _smooth_." His boyish face lit up in longing. "I'm Kalamo. We're waiting for someone to take us in to meet the Veiled Queen. Come on, it won't hurt to visit a little!" He winked at her. Winked. Then grabbed her by the hand and dragged her to the firepit, where his... friends? acquaintances? were rolling their eyes.

"Don't mind Kali," said one of the other two females in the group as Kaylaneth reluctantly sat down. She had a long scar running down her cheek. It looked like a clawmark. "Poor bastard was dropped on the head as a child."

Kaylaneth couldn't tell at first whether she was teasing or really that callous. The cruel smile didn't tell her anything. But as the others introduced themselves or were introduced (Seren, the one sitting furthest from the entrance _and_ the fire, seemed to communicate in annoyed grunts), the undercover agent found herself developing a far-too-easy camaraderie with them. They seemed to be the quintessential misguided youth: Elande readily admitted that she admired the Veiled Queen's 'mystery and magnificence'; scar-faced Caramel was in the rebellious phase against soldier parents who were stationed in Cyrodiil and had named her after a food; Kali, needy Kali, was desperate for the love and acceptance he could never find in the backwater village he'd come from and was lured by promises of just that; and, as for Seren, well: Elande cheerfully told that tale as his face grew stonier and stonier.

His family — mother, father, two elder siblings — had entered the territory of the Bonechewers, a pariah tribe in the wilds of Valenwood. Kaylaneth had heard of them only as an example of the dangers of the backjungle, as a childhood bogeyman.

As Elande detailed the murders and the subsequent feast — never mind that neither she or Seren himself could _possibly_ know the temperature of the water that boiled the Altmer alive — she seemed to delight in it. Kaylaneth knew her disgust was showing on her face. Disgust at everyone involved. Including herself for not being able to defend the good side of her people when Elande proclaimed them all monsters and cannibals at the end of the story. As if the Bonechewers — who lived in the depths of the jungle and were forever on the run from the Vinedusk Rangers for the very crimes against Y'ffre Elande had described — were the extent of Bosmeri culture.

Even Kaylaneth, who had been raised in the weird piece-of-Cyrodiil-in-Valenwood that was Southpoint, knew her wilder cousins had deemed inter-race and non-consensual cannibalism taboo years before. Years before the alliance was even a dream. Of course, the Silvenar — the same one who had died in Khenarthi's Roost, probably — declaring it immoral had made it scarcer than any amount of King Camoran's law-making and fist-waving could ever do.

All of this was lost on the young Altmer, of course, and Kaylaneth couldn't think of a way to correct their misperceptions without revealing herself. If she could save just one of them from this doomed cause — but no, she had to think of the mission. Think of her queen. Think of Razum-dar. Any one these new officers would jump at the chance to skin the suave Khajiit and stick Ayrenn's head on a pike.

"What about you, Alcalime? You've been so quiet!" Kalimo burst out, too-bright eyes fixing on her.

Kaylaneth jumped, startled out of her thoughts. The others — save Seren, of course — showed various kinds of amusement at her confusion.

"Your story, silly," chirped Elande, reaching out to poke her in the shoulder.

Such an innocent gesture, so innocent that Kaylaneth didn't even think to flinch back, to protest, to slap away the hand that went right through the illusion of her body and disappeared into the rippling image.

The entire world ground to a stop in that moment, or maybe it was just the occupants of that one room as they all drew in a startled breath, held it—

And then, of course, the world jolted back into rhythm.

Seren gathered his wits first, leaping to his feet and bellowing out a warcry as he reached for the greatsword propped up against the wall beside him. That snapped Elande and Caramel back into the present, and they, too, surged up, Elande snatching her hand back as if it had been in a fire.

Kaylaneth showed her what real fire was like in the next second as she forced the breath she had been holding from her lungs in a gout of flame. Elande, the closest, was engulfed, and Kaylaneth pushed the screaming, flailing Altmer into Caramel. The two women fell back in a heap. Seren was forced to jump out of the way as he charged, his foot catching on a rock as he twisted and then, and then he fell too, back into the boar and the spit and the fire they had been friends around mere seconds before. Kaylaneth shielded her face from the spray of embers as he went down.

"What— what—" Kali, poor stupid Kali, was struggling to his feet, having been completely forgotten. And, from the look on his face, he was still utterly clueless.

But the truth was dawning in his eyes. His palms rose, perhaps to surrender, but it didn't matter: Kaylaneth, battle-blood pumping furiously, saw visions of magic flying from those hands, and with a single step and an arc of her arm it was over, over, that freckled head exploding beneath the crush of her mace. The force of her blow sent him, nearly decapitated, skidding across the stone toward the entrance.

She stood there, panting, mace hanging from loose fingers as her arms were suddenly so _heavy_. Finally, the echo of shuddering death-gasps rose above the beating of her rabbit heart, and she turned away from Kali's mangled form — _no don't think of him don't don't think of his smile his child-nature don't think don't think at all_ — to find Seren lying supine atop the mostly-extinguished firepit, the metal rod that had stuck the (now badly burnt) boar protruding from his unarmored chest.

It had impaled him, somehow, she realized, but she had no time to dwell on her luck. Seren was staring at her, disbelief in his eyes. "Who..." he rasped out, blood dribbling from his cracked lips.

If he truly wanted to know who had killed him, she supposed she was fine with showing him. Later, she wouldn't be, but in that moment she slipped the ring from her finger and beheld the horror transforming his face, then, oddly, a strange resignation, as if he had always expected no less. "I won't eat you," she murmured meaninglessly, watching the shadowed glaze creep over his eyes, listening to the last great shudder and expulsion of bloodied breath that managed to lift him an inch off the rod through his lung before he fell back, going slack and still.

She spared a glance at Elande and Caramel, forever melded in a mock embrace, but her heart was laden with too much grief to take on more without stopping altogether, so she slipped the ring back on and returned to the mission with her feet firmly on the ruin's stone, but her mind anywhere, anywhere else.

In a way, she was glad when she entered the last chamber and the Veiled Queen — or rather, a projection — was there, generals arrayed about her, for she recognized the pretender from the Skywatch manor and that saved a headache of trying to identify a mer she could very well have never met, had circumstances been different.

In a way, she was glad when she realized Estre knew she was a spy, no matter how, for it meant she could let the enchanted bauble clatter to the ground and roll away into the darkness, showing them it had been a little Bosmer girl who had gone so far.

In a way, she was glad when Estre dedicated her soul to Mehrunes Dagon, for it meant they had utterly no idea she was a unique case.

And she _was_ glad when the generals swarmed and beheaded her without ritual, for she was saved a lot of extra pain from non-fatal wounds still existing when she revived, alone, on the beach below Skywatch, mudcrabs skittering about her body and Molag Bal's laughter drowning out even the roar of high tide ebbing.


	6. Can You See It Coming Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, can you?

It was just before sunrise, judging by the arc of lightening sky spreading out above the stone-dotted island to the east. The same island where the Veil obscured all, Kaylaneth realized dimly as she sat up, shooing away the mudcrabs that had congregated on and around her bare feet. A massive plateau jutted out far above her head, and the distant sounds of a city waking up drifted down to her. Skywatch, thank the gods. Though she was weaponless, dripping wet with saltwater and something had happened to her boots, safety was nearly close enough to touch.

If she had been in heavy armor when they threw her body into the ocean... she was overcome with Razum-dar's foresight. He had insisted she try on the body-hugging but surprisingly protective uniform of the Eyes (the enchanted ring had also hidden that detail) for their meeting in the cafe, and she had never bothered to take it off.

Visions of herself sinking down to the bottom and drowning over and over for eternity played in her head. Would anyone have ever known her fate?

Then, she wondered if Caramel's parents would ever get her body back. If someone, anyone other than herself would carry Kali's memory. If Elande and Seren's souls had gone to Mehrunes Dagon or some plane of Aetherius.

Mudcrab pincers had cut a jagged line on the sole of her left foot, and pain lanced up her leg as she pushed herself to stand. The beach was soggy from the high tide that had swept her in like driftwood, and both salt and sand burned at the wound. She crawled down to the slowly-retreating waves and grit her teeth as she washed the wound in the ocean, then tore off a piece of her underclothes — damp, but free of the grit — with shaking hands and bound the cut as best she was able. A part at her heel was exposed when she was done, but the pain distracted her from her guilt as she hobbled back up the beach and took further stock of her surroundings.

There were low gray walls like the kind on the Veiled Isle just to the north, along with an archway. She had the luck to have washed up in the shelter of another ancient bit of stonework, a half-circle that reminded her of a rough bench. She wondered if, long ago, ancient elves had watched the sun rise over the ocean here.

As she glanced south she realized just how lucky she had been in the shadow of the stone. A huge, lumbering beast was scavenging the mudcrabs. As she watched, fascinated, it raised its head and looked right at her, nostrils opening and closing in great snuffles that were audible even at her distance. She had only seen such a thing in the company of the spriggans back home. When they were threatened the forest spirits could summon an animal made of interwoven vines that resembled the one that stared her down now. But though this thing was furry, and brown, and utterly unlike what she was familiar with, she knew that _this_ was a real bear and the spriggan's beast a mere imitation.

She also knew she had not the slightest chance of either overpowering or escaping it if it decided she was tastier than a mudcrab.

But the bear turned away, sparing her from discovering how she would come back to life if she was half-eaten. Kaylaneth walked carefully and quietly around it, not even pausing when a blade of spiky grass poked at the exposed cut on her heel. She would scream and hop up and down later.

The sun was rising now in earnest, but it was still dammed cold beneath the bluff of Skywatch. Moving from the shade to the still-weak sunshine raised the temperature considerably. Walking on the balls of her feet was difficult, but at least it was less painful. Either way, this rebirth _was_ a lot smoother than the one previous. She distracted herself from the slow cramping in the arch of her foot by imagining Estre's downfall. It didn't have to be poetic, she just wanted it done.

The sounds of the city grew louder and louder as she rounded the beach. Masts, then whole ships came into view. She could almost, almost relax.

But not quite.

If any of the guards were wearing the Veil, she was in big trouble. What if Palomir had returned to the city, even? She pressed into the shadow of the bluff, inching along towards the docks and watching the sailors move their cargo. No one was looking her way, but she kept to the shade until she was nearly at the closest pier.

"Kaylaneth?"

She jumped and swore, reaching for weapons that weren't there, but the voice was soft, feminine, surprised. Happily surprised.

Turning slowly to stare at the dock, she could not believe her luck. Never in a hundred eras could she not be blessed by Y'ffre. Or maybe one of the Eight. She would take a benevolent Daedra at this point, if only to know who was watching out for her, why, and if it would please please continue.

For it was Jimila who stood there.

Her old friend was smiling, but if Kaylaneth had learned anything about Khajiit expressions it was to recognize the puzzlement hanging about the edges of her face and the sharp sweep of her tail. "What are you doing?" she said, almost teasing. Almost casual.

Kaylaneth knew the stakes and answered desperately, honestly. "I'm in trouble, and I need your help."

The Khajiit did not seem surprised, but she did relax. "Then I will help as best I am able."

Jimila. The answer to all the riddles. Kaylaneth could have kissed her in that moment.

~*~*~*~

Within a minute, Jimila had Oblan in charge of the Prowler, Kaylaneth bundled up in a cloak, and a rusty mace scrounged from the belly of the ship. The Bosmer didn't give the details — or what she had become — but Jimila seemed to know more than what little either of them had offered. It was in the grip of her furry hand as they walked, arm in arm, as quickly as they could without drawing suspicion.

With very Altmer they passed, Kaylaneth imagined them turning back, demanding answers. Or drawing steel.

But no one said a word. No one gave her more than a curious glance as they went about their own business in the strengthening morning. It was promising to be another fair day in Auridon. Kaylaneth almost wanted a storm, if only to match the metaphorical one brewing in the city. Estre was some kind of ruler of Skywatch, like an ascended Canonreeve. What if this city descended into the same chaos as Mathiisen? And that was if the Heritance lost at all.

"I can't say it'll be fine, Kaylaneth," Jimila said suddenly as they ascended the steps to the manor, "but tearing my sword arm off won't help matters. Hmm?"

Kaylaneth disentangled herself, hands shaking. She did not look at Jimila, keeping her eyes on the door as she eased it open, and what lay beyond.

The manor was quiet, and shrouded in darkness; the sunrise had not yet pierced the stained glass windows above the dais. Kaylaneth couldn't keep her eyes from flicking to the shadows cast by the columns, and even the soft padding of Jimila's feet on the marble behind her sawed at already frayed nerves. As for her, she was still barefoot, and silent as the hunter she could have been in another life. In the manor the bustle of Skywatch proper was a distant memory, and as Kaylaneth approached the throne she realized why; no guards were posted there, or anywhere. The manor was silent and empty to her senses, though she knew better than to trust they were truly alone.

"Kaylaneth?" It echoed in the eerie quiet, and the Bosmer sucked in a short, sharp breath through her nose, realizing she had come to a stop in front of the empty throne. Her head was pounding with an acute feeling of _wrongness_ that made the cut on her foot throb in time. Jimila's voice, just a whisper as it was, felt like a violation of something unholy.

"Upstairs," she murmured, making a decision almost on a whim.

Jimila padded closer and brushed a hand against the back of Kaylaneth's arm before taking point, unsheathing her claws as she did so, though a sword also hung at her hip.

The Bosmer was all too glad to let her friend lead. They took the stairs as quickly as a measure of stealth would allow, and Jimila melded to the shadows with an ease that Kaylaneth refused to believe was granted by her race. Jealousy flared in the back of her mind.

The first few rooms were empty, but they were parlors and studies and a library and Kaylaneth had expected them to be so. The dread was prickling up the back of her spine now, sending her shuddering if she let it loose; she kept her body rigid to keep herself from shaking. She poked her head into the next room, and bit back a sigh of premature relief at the figure sleeping on the massive four-poster, a gold-threaded quilt hiding their identity. She crept into the room, unsure whether it was Ayrenn or Estre or someone else, and edged around the bed to get a better look before she got hasty.

When the face came into view, small tiara (a different one than she was used to seeing the queen in) perched on silky blond tresses as though Ayrenn hadn't bothered to take it off, Kaylaneth could have cried. She reached forward to shake the royal shoulder, too relieved to do anything else.

Ayrenn's hand shot out, gripping Kaylaneth's arm hard enough to bruise, the dagger that had been under her pillow coming up to meet the Bosmer's neck as she jerked her forward. "Last mistake, assassin," she said, calm as a frozen lake.

"Your Majesty!" Jimila shouted.

The queen blinked, eyes darting to Jimila and back to the Bosmer. The dagger withdrew, Kaylaneth was released, then Ayrenn sat up, rubbing at her eyes and inquiring as to what the matter was.

"It's Estre, she— she's the Veiled Queen. I saw her through a projection at the Isle," Kaylaneth said, stumbling back and rubbing at her arm, which would undoubtedly be purple in a few hours.

"Estre? But she doesn't know any—"

The floor lurched violently, sending them all sprawling. A great noise like a thousand angry bees buzzing in her ears rose up from the city below, and through the window the sky turned red as freshly spilled blood. Dark, heavy clouds scuttled in unnaturally quickly from the horizon, but Kaylaneth knew somehow that they were not filled with rain.

Then came the screams.

"...magic..." Ayrenn finished in a whisper, fear in her face and her voice and in the way her hands trembled for a moment before she forced them still.

They sat frozen for a few horrible seconds, before Ayrenn threw off the sheets and got up, rushing to the stand where her armor and accompanying padding were arranged and strapping them on over her nightclothes, barking at Kaylaneth to take a shield and weapon from the armory across the hall as she did so. The Bosmer hurried to obey, running across a pair of leather boots in the other room that, while a bit large, would protect her feet better than her makeshift bandage. She grabbed a kite shield and a steel mace as well and met her friend and her queen at the top of the stairs.

"Where is Urcelmo? And my guards?" Ayrenn had swapped the tiara for a helmet that managed to be even more grand, a sword that looked more ceremonial than functional on her hip.

"I don't know," Kaylaneth answered, looking around the main hall. Light was now streaming through the stained glass, but since it was red, the effect was disturbing rather than comforting. The screams were increasing in number and volume, along with a horrible scraping sound that set everyone's teeth on edge.

The trio reached the doors. Just as Ayrenn grabbed the handle they burst open, but though Kaylaneth expected an attacker, it was a bearded Altmer in mage robes, whose age was indeterminate — he could have been sixty or six hundred — and whose face was equal parts authority, panic and relief. "Your Majesty!" he boomed as the women skidded to a stop. "The Heritance is opening gates to Oblivion!"

Ayrenn took command, barking, "We need to mount a defense," before pushing past the mer and looking out over the city. "Telenger, we need mages. And whatever is left of the guard."

Telenger was shaking his head before she had even finished her orders. "The first one opened up in the guildhall." He pointed north, though Kaylaneth couldn't see anything but the red sky from her vantage point. She found herself dreading what she would find if she stepped from the relative safety of the manor.

Ayrenn sucked in a breath and swore.

"As for the city guard, they were the ones who opened the portals. I'd make the educated guess that the entire force was replaced by Heritance sympathizers and agents at some point, because they all moved at once."

Another curse. "And the Fighter's Guild, where are they?"

Kaylaneth remembered the fight for the anchor outside Vulkhel Guard with a wince.

"Holed up in their own hall," he said, gesturing. "Their gate opened right outside the front door. They have an escape tunnel, but... well, look."

He moved away, and Jimila eased outside, followed by Kaylaneth. The four of them went to stand at the top of the stairs, where Skywatch stretched out below. Or rather, what was left of it.

The city was in ruins already, smoke rising from the crumbling buildings and the marketplace, where fire leapt from the roof of the general merchant's tent to the woodworker's shop and beyond. The streets were mostly deserted of folk, but dremora prowled the city, breaking down doors, and then the screams would start anew. More of them, as well as clannfear and other lesser Daedra, emerged from the massive portals scattered in strategic positions around the city. These were the gates Telenger had mentioned: two wicked-looking spikes of an ebony material, curved inward, and between them a pulsing, lava-like membrane from which came the Daedra. Gates were in front of the Fighter's Guild hall, at the steps to the docks, and she could just barely spot the one inside the other guildhall, only visible because half the roof had collapsed.

But these gates were tiny compared to the one at the entrance to the city. It was half again the width of the opening and just as tall, a fiery opening acting as Imperial highway for three times as many Daedra than the rest combined. More kinds than she knew the names of flooded into Mundus: large and small, winged and Nirnbound, bestial and _almost_ human.

"They can't get back in once they're out..." Jimila murmured, ears pinned back and claws extending and retracting as if from habit.

"Exactly." Telenger ran a hand through his beard. "It seems they have barricaded themselves inside for the moment."

Kaylaneth spoke up, thinking of the Prophet's promise to get in touch with her. "I had someone communicate to me by projection once. Can you do that?"

Telenger had ignored her thus far, but his head whipped around and he peered at her as if truly seeing her for the first time. "Yes... It's a difficult magic, though. I'm working on making it simpler. Where did you meet—?"

"Focus, Telenger," warned Ayrenn softly.

He jumped, coughing. "Er, yes. Good idea. There's only two ways to close that kind of Oblivion Gate by our power. The first is to use the same paraphernalia the Heritance did, in a ritual exactly the same as the opening one, but backwards. I don't know which variation they used, it would take too long to find out, and in any case it seems most of the Heritance agents were killed by the Daedra." He glanced at Ayrenn, saw the look on her face, and hastily added, "In any case! The other way is easier, but more dangerous. Someone needs to enter the Gate and find the conduit for the... well, in short they need to find whatever is holding it together. It's usually a sigil stone, but it could also be something else. Most pockets reached from Oblivion gates are very small, luckily. These ones in particular because they were opened by mer and not the Daedric Prince himself."

"Ah. I assume you are going to tell this to the Fighter's Guild?"

"Yes, your Majesty."

"Good. I suppose three fighters isn't enough to close that big gate—" Telenger nodded, going pale, "—so we're going to split up. Jimila, stay here. Watch each other's backs. Kaylaneth and I are going to get as many people as we can from the upper city out. Meet up with us when you're done here, and may Mara's love be with you." She nodded to each of them as they bowed, then she took Kaylaneth's arm and tugged her down the steps.

"Be safe," the Bosmer managed to call before she had to turn around or risk breaking her neck on the stairs. It didn't feel like enough, since she knew it could be the last time she saw her friend alive, but 'goodbye' sounded wrong on her lips at the best of times. She sent a silent prayer up to Y'ffre, Akatosh and the rest, before they stumbled into a group of Daedra and the first of many battles stole her attention.

~*~*~*~

Together they stole through the city, avoiding the marketplace and the majority of the Daedra as best they could. Time ran against them, however: most of the people they encountered were dead or close to it, tormented by the invaders past breaking. Kaylaneth preformed more mercy kills than she had any right to, but her queen urged her on through the nausea. As for Ayrenn, she took to killing Daedra as if she was born for it, and her sword proved the best of both formality and function.

They spent hours, undoubtedly, combing the upper city, but Kaylaneth had no sense of time's passage. Not even her thirst was a clue, as the heat, sticky as graht-sap, left her mouth dry long before it should have been.

As she emerged from yet another house whose occupants were beyond rescuing, Kaylaneth couldn't stave off the inevitable anymore. "I don't think we're going to find anyone," she said softly, even as she scanned the street for more Daedra. It was quiet for the moment.

"I know." Ayrenn wiped her forehead. "But... but let's go check the Mages Guild, just in case. We'll need help if we're going to close the largest gate. Perhaps we can close a smaller one along the way."

~*~*~*~

Privately, Kaylaneth thought the Mages Guild detour was a fool's errand, but she could not deny that they would need to close all the gates, and they might as well start with a regular-sized one.

Regular-sized was a misleading way to think of it, however; she realized this as she stood in the archway that had once been a door, before the guild's roof collapsed. The gate was three times as tall as she was. It pulsed with a vile energy that made her skin feel like it was about to detach itself, and the feeling only intensified as she inched closer, shield out.

Kaylaneth's nose twitched, but she could not cover it. Unlike the outside, which smelled of burnt corpses with varying degrees of intensity, the gate reeked of a gangrenous wound.

"There aren't any corpses," Ayrenn whispered from the doorway as Kaylaneth started creeping around the gate, shield up to deflect an attack that did not come.

Where were the Daedra? That was what worried her. They weren't behind the gate, either, and the only signs of their presence were the gate itself and deep scratches like clawmarks on the stone floor in front of it.

"Well, let's go inside," Kaylaneth finally said, swallowing against the nausea. That smell was getting worse, not better. "I don't suppose we can just—"

But Ayrenn gave her a hard look from the other side of the gate, and quite deliberately laid the fingertips of her free hand upon the surface of the portal. With a _snap_ , she disappeared in a flash of blood-colored light.

"—dammit! Please, Akatosh, let this work." She dared not let go of her borrowed shield even for a moment. Instead Kaylaneth curled her mace-wielding hand around and, taking a breath that stung her throat, brushed her knuckles against the membranous gate.

A ripping sensation squeezed all air from her lungs as her very being filled with heat. In a moment she was consumed from the inside out, and when the flames retreated ever so slightly she was not in Skywatch, or Coldharbour, but on a spit of land jutting into a sea of churning fire-like-earth that spilled over into a pit with no end, where ash filled the air and the sky was engulfed in flame, looking upon a tower of black, shimmering metal that tilted out over the yawning abyss.

Had she the breath, she would have screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to some timely encouragement (<3) I finally got around to writing Breaking Down again. I found the perfect spot for a break, though it shortens the chapter considerably, and thus Breaking Down will now be in 7 chapters, not 6. I'm glad, actually; this gives me more room for something I had been debating about including in either the last chapter of this or as a flashback in the next part. With any luck, it will not be flashback'd.


	7. Breaking Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skywatch burns, but Oblivion burns ever hotter...

Dagon's plane was no less a nightmare given form than Coldharbour was, but Kaylaneth was in too much of a panic as she scrambled towards the tower to let the contrast truly sink in. The heat was suffocating, stickier even than it had been outside. She struggled to draw breath and within seconds her hair was a matted mess soaked through with sweat. The Eye uniform clung to her linen underclothes, which had become one with her skin, but she still felt naked without her heavy plate.

_Keep moving, keep moving..._ the chant echoed in her head, driving back the worst of the panic. What had Telenger said? These pockets of Oblivion were very small? It didn't look very small to her. The fire flowed forth as far as her eyes could see, to roll like a waterfall into the abyss that stretched to the far horizon. The tower, too, was huge, larger than the old Colovian towers back in Southpoint by far.

But, she realized, perhaps this was small for Oblivion. How big was Coldharbour? She couldn't recall now.

She scurried down the spit towards the tower, trying to remember more of Telenger's words. _Conduit... sigil stone..._ She had a feeling whatever was holding the plane together would be in the tower. Probably on the top level in a place of honor. Past a horde of Daedra, definitely.

While the peninsula was empty except for her and the gate she had appeared by, as she approached the base of the tower she caught a glimpse of something moving there. She moved to the side of the path, where a jagged rock provided shelter, or at least a semblance of it. A long, thin, talon-like root grew in bunches on top of the rock; she was not terribly surprised when the ends, on level with her face, took a swipe at her. Hostile plantlife was normal for her, as stranglers infested the jungles around Southpoint. Why not in Oblivion?

Kaylaneth moved out of range, peering around the rock. A small Daedra that looked vaguely like a wingless imp was capering about in the open space some fifty paces away. It was in constant motion, cackling and squeaking to itself — at least, she hoped it was alone, that nothing was lurking in the tower nearby. She watched it for a few moments, wishing she had a bow or slingshot.

The Bosmer crept forward, half her focus on the beast, the other half on how she placed her feet. Though she made no sound that she could hear, her target suddenly turned, chattering rather like a monkey, and threw a fireball at her.

Its aim was off, so Kaylaneth only had to twist left to avoid the projectile. Dagon's realm was already so hot that the flames flying inches from her face did little to bother her further. She leapt at the creature, dodging another attack, and sank her mace into its skull.

It crumpled with a soft whine. The crunch of bones, that finality, both satisfied and sickened the Bosmer. She took a moment to breathe, as well as she could in the stifling air. But then that feeling she had had by the gate — that her skin was separating from her muscles — returned in full force, and she had to move onward.

The tower, all angles and spikes, blocked out much of the nightmare sky above. There was nowhere else to go, not even around the base. Rubble blocked that path.

But the entrance to the tower was before her. She inched her way up the jagged steps, glancing up at the sheer walls above. Glowing orange windows were set there. A skeleton, swaying in a breeze she did not feel, hung out from a spike almost directly above her. Kaylaneth swallowed hard. The signature blue robes of the Mages Guild hung in tatters off it.

Where was Ayrenn, though?

The inside of the tower was dark and much cooler than the outside. Kaylaneth listened, but all she heard was the distant creaking of the mage's bones. In the center of the circular room was a fountain, made of the same black stone, spurting what was probably blood. It was frothing; steam drifted up through the hollowed-out center of the tower. A ramp spiraled up into the darkness, with windows along its path. They were orange on this side too. She didn't see any Daedra, but she didn't want to move out to the open, closer to the fountain and farther from cover.

She started up the ramp, keeping close to the wall. The floor and the ceiling — the next loop of the ramp — were very close together, and also uneven, so that the tips of her antlers brushed against the rough stonework above. In the places where the ceiling leveled out but the floor didn't, she found herself bent double, even crawling once, to get through. She was quickly covered in the dirt and — to her disgust — bits of fragmented bone that littered the ramp.

By the time she emerged, she was halfway up the tower. Looking up, she saw what appeared to be the top: some kind of red marble-like stone, far above her, formed a ring with a hole in the center, through which she could see the underside of the spire even farther up.

As for her, she was standing on the edge of what looked like a lift. It was circular, and had a dozen holes in it about the width of her outstretched fingers, but a lever was in the middle and she didn't see any other way up. Carefully she tested her weight on it. It held, and she made her way around the holes to the lever. _This is too easy_ , she thought. Still, she pulled it.

It gave with the squeal of rusty metal. The lift shuddered and began to rise.

_What's powering it? Daedric magic?_ Kaylaneth wondered.

The lift picked up speed. As it got closer to the red marble above, she began to make out shapes in the darkness of the underside of the spire. Shapes that looked like—

She sprinted for the edge, tripping halfway there and rolling the rest of the way, dropping off the edge just as the spikes slammed home, slotting neatly in the holes as the lift jerked to a stop, flush against the ceiling.

She smacked into the platform below, a sharp burst of pain in her shoulder signaling that she had landed on the red marble and not where the lift had started. The pain meant she was alive, she tried to remind herself through the string of curses that spilled from her lips. Also through the curses, she realized she heard the murmur of another voice. Turning her head from the cool stone and peering to her left, she made out the expanse of floor, the wall beyond and... the bottom of a cage suspended from the ceiling.

Inside was Ayrenn.

The Altmer was covered in fresh blood, but from the alert, if frightened look to her eyes as she stared wordlessly at Kaylaneth, most of it wasn't hers. Her hair was matted with it, her underclothes soaked through, and her face painted red. Her armor was missing. She'd curled her long, slender body in on itself.

Ayrenn's eyes darted to the side, and Kaylaneth tore her own away to find the room was filled with cages, big and small, high up and sitting on the ground. They held the other missing members of the Skywatch Mage's Guild, one per cage, all of them in a similar state as Ayrenn, some of them already dead. The living watched the free Bosmer in their midst with fear and hope alike.

None of them were making much noise, and Kaylaneth almost asked why aloud before she saw Ayrenn make a minute shake of her head, and twitch one finger to beckon her closer. She scrambled up, collecting her mace and shield. The wood had a large crack in it from the fall, and Kaylaneth knew it would not last long.

"Listen," Ayrenn whispered when the Bosmer had crept over. "There is a Dremora, sleeping in that other room." She pointed to a door set in the wall. "He keeps the Sigil Stone in there. We'll make a distraction, and you sneak in and grab it while he's busy with us."

"But—"

"No buts, my Eye," Ayrenn interrupted, managing to sound firm though she was still whispering. "Don't worry about us. Just get the Stone."

Kaylaneth's heart wrenched, but she had little choice. "All right." She pressed herself against the wall behind the door's hinge.

Ayrenn nodded to her, jaw set. Then she stood up, clutching at the bars. " _HELP!_ " The mages started screaming too, begging for someone to come. The cacophony hurt Kaylaneth's ears — it would wake the dead, surely.

Something slammed in the room beyond before the door burst open. A Dremora came out, cracking a whip that made the mages gibber with fear, but he advanced on Ayrenn. Kaylaneth saw the long, barbed instrument curl around the queen's ankle just as she ducked inside the room.

The Sigil Stone turned out to be a red-orange orb, sitting on a pedestal by the surprisingly comfortable-looking bed. Or rather, floating above the pedestal. It exuded a force that made Kaylaneth's skin crawl again, but worse. The closer she got to it the harder it got to think about picking it up. She got to within reaching distance of it, but her feet refused to move any closer and her arms would not lift.

"Foolish mortal," grated a voice from the doorway behind her. "The Stone cannot just be _lifted_ , like a rock."

A squeal escaped her lips but she couldn't move, the Stone's power holding her fast. It squeezed around her, a terrible pressure that she had to work to even blink in.

The Dremora laughed, the sound echoing above the mages' screams of horror, and cracked the whip across her back. It tore the uniform like paper and laid a line of fire across her skin, forcing a cry from her. She fell to her knees, the joints unable to hold her weight under such pain.

The whip cracked again, and another burst of flame tore a scream out of her throat. She fell forward, smacking into the unyielding stone of the pedestal and knocking it over. The Stone fell too, rolling across the floor like a marble, and the spell was broken. Kaylaneth flailed.

Her fingertips brushed against the orb as it rolled out of her reach.

A smell like rotten eggs flooded her nose, and an unbearable pressure lifted, as the pocket of Oblivion folded in on itself with the sound of a world being unmade.

 

 

~*~*~*~

"... Kay ... up, wake up ... Aur ..."

Her eyelids fluttered, but she couldn't get them to open. She was tired, so tired.

"... I'm a ... find potions ... help ..."

Warm hands grabbed her shoulder, and she whimpered. The hands hesitated for just a moment before pushing, rolling her onto her side. She became aware that she had been laying on her back. The lash-wounds, seeping blood, unstuck from the floor with a ripping sound but far less pain than she — or rather, some sliver of her mind; the rest was less than conscious — expected, but she heard herself gasp anyway.

"Come on, stay with me..." The low murmur was separating out into individual voices.

She just wanted to sleep, but someone kept poking at her back, and the tingling kept her from drifting off. _It should hurt more than this_.

"Wake up, wake up."

More hands pulled her head up and laid it in a lap. The smells of sweat and blood mixed with a faint perfume. This, more than the voices, dragged her back to Mundus.

Her eyes opened, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Ayrenn's face came into focus above her. The dirt and blood had yet to be washed off, but that was Tamriel's sky beyond, Kaylaneth was sure of it. It was still an unnatural red straight up, but a thin strip of the horizon in all directions was back to blue. Dagon's hold was loosening.

She was back in Skywatch, in the ruins of the Mages Guild, and that was a man — Breton, or perhaps Imperial — in the blue and white robes frowning at her back. Kaylaneth tried to twist her head around to see what was the matter, but Ayrenn gently held her in place as the human cast a spell on the wounds, sweeping his hands up and down along her spine. She could feel her skin knitting together as her back tingled, but the healing spell was warm and soothing.

"Do you feel better?" Ayrenn asked quietly, stroking her hair.

"Yeah," Kaylaneth whispered, trying to sit up once the spell faded. Her left shoulder twinged as she shifted it against the stone.

The healer eyed her carefully. "Hold on, Your Majesty, I think there's one more."

A bit of shuffling later and Ayrenn was carefully propping her up, avoiding the still-raw whipmarks, and the mage was prodding at her shoulder. "It's a wonder you didn't dislocate it, the way you fell," he murmured. He sent a burst of magic into it, easing the twinges of pain.

"Better," Kaylaneth said. Her throat was raw. With the queen to steady her, she stood up and looked around.

Behind, the Oblivion gate stood. The red-orange, membranous portal was gone, and all that was left was the frame of ebony spikes. The Sigil Stone lay discarded in front of it, though there were mages all around, tending to wounds, catching their breaths, or sorting through supplies.

Suddenly, the ground lurched and a great roar arose from the east. A mage, standing at the doorway of the ruined building, called, "The Fighters Guild have destroyed their gate!"

Ayrenn let go of Kaylaneth and ran over, checking for herself before turning back and calling to the assembled people, "The Fighters are here! Let's go take back our home!"

"Your Majesty, don't you need a weapon and armor...?" Kaylaneth asked, looking around for her mace and finding it, along with her almost-ruined shield, nearby.

"I'm sure the Fighters will have extra supplies," a mage pointed out.

"Right. All those able to kill Daedra, come with me!"

Kaylaneth rather thought the normally reserved queen was being rash, but she took a deep breath and followed along, charging down the steps in a horde of mages.

The group encountered no Daedra along the way, or any living thing in the dark streets. The lack of resistance was eerie, and Kaylaneth knew that the worst was yet to come. She sent up another prayer. More of the horizon was visible now, raising her hopes that, if they closed the last gate, the crisis would be over for good. It must have been late afternoon by then, but she had no way to tell.

"Your Majesty!" came a shout as the group rounded a corner, Ayrenn in the lead, and beheld Battlereeve Urcelmo, armed to the teeth, in front of the Fighters Guild gate. He was accompanied by a small army of Guild members, along with Jimila, Telenger, and (Kaylaneth could have kissed his whiskers) Razum-dar.

"Urcelmo," said Ayrenn, skidding to a stop in front of him. "Report."

"Raz and I were meeting with an agent of his when the gates started opening. We took cover in the Fighters Guild. Thanks to Telenger, we managed to close this thing. The hall steward went with a few others to clear the docks and — _where is your armor?_ " A look of alarm took over his face as he seemed to realize what state the queen was in.

"It is a long story, but I am fine. I need to borrow a cuirass and a blade."

"I need a new shield," Kaylaneth interjected, holding hers up.

Within seconds a new, metal shield in the Altmer style was pressed into her hands, and Ayrenn was pulling on a full set of heavy plate. The fighters and mages, perhaps forty or fifty in all, gathered as Ayrenn laid out her plan. It was a pincer maneuver, simple but hopefully effective. Half of them, an equal number of each faction plus Jimila, Raz and Kaylaneth, would head south and wait for the signal as Telenger, Urcelmo, Ayrenn and the others went west and looped around towards the market. Then they would clear out the Gate.

"Raz, you're in charge," Ayrenn told the Eye as they split up. "Go with Auri-el, my friends." Her gaze lingered long on the group before she took off.

Razum-dar stared after the queen's back, tail twitching, until Jimila nudged him. He turned and Kaylaneth saw something flicker in his eyes before the Khajiit spy tried to joke, "Well! It has been a long time since Raz was truly in charge of anything." His lips quirked. When next he spoke the humor was gone. "Let's end this."

 

 

~*~*~*~

When Telenger's flare rose like a blooming flower and exploded in blue sparks in the air over Skywatch, Kaylaneth's fellows charged with a collective roar. The Daedra were roaming the market area, rifling through the debris of the collapsed smithy, setting the stalls aflame, and piling the corpses of celebrant and merchant alike in a heap before the Gate. If any were aware of the destruction of the other portals, they showed no sign.

Their defense crumbled before the wave of mortals crashing down upon them. In the distance Kaylaneth saw Ayrenn, the magical shield around her glowing bright, leading her own force in a tight formation. Though the Daedra were strong, each fought alone.

It was over quickly, and the groups met. Ayrenn bowed her head before the pile of broken bodies, but said nothing. Several in the crowd looked about to weep, and more itched to reach forward and pull a loved one out of the mess; it was obvious. The smell alone was enough to make Kaylaneth question the Meat Mandate. She supposed it was a good thing she had been raised in Southpoint, where Colovian influence made following the Green Pact to the letter difficult anyway.

Ayrenn raised her head, jaw set, and they all turned as one to the Gate.

"Think Estre's in there?" Kaylaneth asked of no one in particular.

It was Raz who answered. He did not even seem surprised to hear the Kinlady's name. "Most likely. This one does not think she would have gone far, not when her plan is in motion."

"Let us hope so, hmm?" Jimila purred from Raz's other side, giving Kaylaneth a wink. Her friend could maintain a calm facade in any storm.

Kaylaneth sighed, looking over to where the Queen and her Battlereeve were in an intense, if nearly inaudible, argument. Ayrenn was keeping her cool, if barely, while Urcelmo's choppy gestures betrayed his frustration. "Stop it," the Queen said at last, just loud enough to be overheard. "That is an order, by the way. I am going." Urcelmo's frown only deepened as she turned to address everyone else. "All right. I don't know what's waiting for us, and I know most of you never signed up for this particular Daedric invasion, so if anyone wants to sit out this part I understand."

Kaylaneth blinked. Was the offer merely a courtesy or did she actually expect anyone to turn coward when victory could be so close?

No one moved and no one spoke for several moments while Ayrenn looked grimly from face to face. Then a familiar voice came from the back.

"Your Majesty," Telenger boomed, having the kind of voice that projected itself whatever the wishes of its owner. "I wish to stay behind. I'm not as young as I once was and someone will need to hold the city for your triumphant return."

Ayrenn nodded to him. "Granted. Everyone else, with me!"

 

 

~*~*~*~

Kaylaneth materialized in a large cavern, bare of life but lit with an unsettling red glow that came from everywhere and nowhere at once. The Gate rumbled behind her as more and more of the group came through, filling the space in a jostle of bodies. It was perhaps even hotter here than the other plane; beads of sweat glistened on the faces of the men and mer around her, and the Khajiits were looking even worse off in the humidity. Except for Razum-dar, of course. Kaylaneth spotted him at the very edge of the crowd, peering down the only exit: a rough tunnel that sloped further into the earth.

"Shh!" he hissed over the uneasy murmuring of the fighters and mages. "Raz hears something."

Kaylaneth heard nothing but breaths and her own heartbeat, even when the others quieted. But Raz's ears were flicking, a sure sign that something was happening. The others realized it too, readying weapon and spell as noiselessly as they could. She eased through the crowd closer to her friend, straining her ears, though they still heard nothing beyond the chamber.

"What is it, Raz?" she whispered when she was by his side.

"Footsteps." He flicked his ears again. "But they are going away as well as near. A patrol, he thinks. Dremora, from the sound."

"How many?"

"Four, but the echoes may lie. Regardless, they have not heard us yet. This is good." He turned and scanned the crowd again. "Discretion is the key. Who knows how many Daedra are down here, plus the traitor. We are going to have to take this slow to avoid more casualties."

"Right," said Kaylaneth. "A splinter group, then?" She glanced over at Ayrenn, who nodded.

"Raz, go ahead and take as many scouts as you'll need. Someone here probably knows a muffling spell, if it will help."

Soon enough, four volunteers — three lightly-armored fighters and a mage specializing in muffling and invisibility — with Raz at the helm were sneaking off down the passageway. Kaylaneth wondered why he took so few. She knew that larger groups were harder to manage, her own family being one such case, but were five people enough to be safe?

She and Ayrenn locked eyes; the queen's worry matched her own. Not for the first time, Kaylaneth wondered whether she and Raz were in a relationship. Sometimes the way they looked at each other was less than professional. At the very least, close friends.

Suddenly, Raz reappeared by Kaylaneth's side. She gasped and clutched her chest in shock.

Raz seemed amused by this. "All clear, my friend!" He glanced over at Ayrenn, back to business. "You should see this."

Like a slow-motion wave, the group flowed down the tunnel, the Queen's entourage at the head. The walls here were more smoothly cut than the ones in the tower in the other Gate, but Kaylaneth felt anxious all the same. She wondered if she was developing claustrophobia. It wouldn't surprise her.

The tunnel leveled out, then reached a crossroads. The scouts and mage were there, standing over a pile of daedra. The mage was frowning, holding a ball of magicka and looking down each of the hallways in turn. He dropped and re-cast the spell, whatever it was, muttering to himself. "That's not right..."

"Madri-jo here says the finder-spell isn't working. Raz doesn't claim to know what that means, so perhaps Madri-jo could explain it, hmm?"

"There's something blocking it, that's the short answer," Madri-jo grumbled, casting the spell again. "An anti-magic ward, probably. Which means that it is impossible to tell which tunnel holds our quarry."

Ayrenn glanced behind her at the pack of mages and fighters, clearly torn over the decision she was about to make. Kaylaneth watched her face carefully, knowing in her gut what was about to happen. The queen squared her shoulders and projected her voice out over the gathering. "We're going to split up. Form groups of fifteen. Raz, Urcelmo, you're going to lead the left and right splinters. Kaylaneth, you're with me straight ahead."

It took a bit of wrangling, but the groups were formed quickly given the number of people being shifted around. Kaylaneth stuck close to her queen, using the opportunity to inspect her borrowed gear. The Eye uniform was holding up well enough, but the leather boots were warping in the heat. She hoped they would hold up to the end of this nightmare.

Then they were off, starting off slow but breaking into a trot as the tunnel widened and no Daedra appeared to challenge them. Gradually the tunnel sloped upward again, then became a flight of rough-hewn stairs. At the very top, the bloody sky of the Deadlands was clearly visible, and Kaylaneth felt a shudder run through the entire group. They were close now, if her sense of impending doom was anything to go by.

She was right.

They emerged at one end of a huge, earthen platform, surrounded on all sides by lava. Curved black spikes, as wide as a man and twice as tall, lined the arena at intervals; blood dripped from them. At the far end, what could only have been a Daedric stage, all sharp corners and torture implements. Kaylaneth caught a glimpse of a figure seated on a throne-like protrusion in the back wall of the stage, but it was hard to tell who it was from the distance and the fact that there were approximately fifty Flame Atronachs between them and whoever it was.

"Steady now," Ayrenn breathed, probably sensing the fear of her subjects, or indeed herself. "I don't think they've seen us y—"

"Dear sister-in-law, how _nice_ of you to come visit," Estre boomed out, her voice coming from everywhere at once. The false cheer dropped from her tone as she snarled, "But you won't get any farther, false Queen. Die now, alongside your barbaric runts and immoral cats."

The Atronachs glided forward, and everyone scattered.

 

 

~*~*~*~

Kaylaneth soon found herself struggling — her Dragonknight abilities focused on flame, which the Atronachs were immune to, and the only other trick up her sleeve was her Obsidian Shield, which helped block damage but was useless in cutting down the Atronachs swarming her. She'd grouped with another Bosmer, a mage, at first, but within minutes he had taken a hit from an Atronach that set his robes on fire and, in his panic, he had fallen off the platform into the lava below. Others had simply been overwhelmed, and the smell of cooked flesh made her cough even as she dodged a fireball and bashed the offending Daedra with her shield.

It died without a sound, and she stepped behind one of the spike-pillars to catch her breath and take stock of the situation.

It was bad, of course. Three left, all separated from each other, and dozens of Atronachs remained. Ayrenn fought on, but even her beacon of strength was flickering. If she fell...

Kaylaneth ran for her, clobbering an Atronach on the way, and was maybe halfway there when a vicious fireball to the gut brought the Queen to her knees. The Atronachs floated in for the kill.

She'd never done it, but in that moment Kaylaneth remembered a detail from a book her mother had gotten her. _Obsidian Shield is a useful skill that protects the Dragonknight, as well as allies, from damage._ She had been casting it with herself in mind, but what if she...

There was no time. She cast the shield in mid-stride, feeling the second skin mold to her body, but watching her winded Queen. A dull gray gleam flashed over Ayrenn's armor, before the Atronachs reared back and threw their fireballs. One second, perhaps less, of an inferno engulfing the Queen, but it felt so much longer.

She screamed in inarticulate rage, pouncing on the nearest Atronach and driving the whole group — _five of them, there had been five against one_ — back in confusion. Two fell to her fury before they could regroup, and then Ayrenn was there, alongside her, _alive_. She was breathing raggedly, one arm curled around her middle while the other slashed at the Deadra with a sword that was really not designed to be in contact with so much fire in a short period of time.

Another down, and Ayrenn glanced Kaylaneth's way through the burst of flame that drove them back. The Queen looked about to say something, but a wordless scream drew their attention to the far end of the platform, and the Bosmer only caught a glimpse of Estre jerking her staff up before a wave of pure force sent her flying back.

She landed with an audible _crack_ against a spike-pillar, blood gurgling from her lips. Something was broken, but she didn't know what, and a strange buzzing muffled all sound. Through blurred eyes she saw Ayrenn, not caught by the blast, looking back at her, mouthing something, and behind, Estre stalking forward with murderous glee. Kaylaneth tried to scream, warn her, anything, but still more blood was frothing in her mouth, and oh, yes, she had broken a rib. Or all of them.

So she could only watch as Estre waved her staff again, and naked, desperate fear cross Ayrenn's dirt-streaked face — fear for _her?_ — before the Queen, too, learned to fly.

"Oh, sister-in-law, you really are so naive," Estre drawled, stepping over the corpses of Flame Atronach and brave guildmember alike as she approached. Ayrenn had landed on her back, not far off from Kaylaneth, but too far, too far. She was gasping, trying to grab her fallen sword, just out of reach. Estre stepped close and leaned down. "Now you die."

She raised her staff.

Kaylaneth screamed, blood splattering her chin and her arm as she reached out, searching for something, anything, the last reserves of her energy to possibly stop this—

The staff flared, and a fireball shot out as Ayrenn rolled left. Flames struck stone, and Ayrenn cried out, grasping at her exposed arm now. Estre frowned in annoyance and made to cast again.

A droplet of magicka regenerated into her exhausted reserves, and Kaylaneth grabbed it, forcing it out through her hand. It had to be enough. It had to. The unnatural strain made her head throb and time slow, Ayrenn's face contorted in pain, Este's in murderous glee.

_Shink_. Curved spikes, not unlike the larger ones around them, burst forth from the ground around Estre's feet. She stumbled in shock, and one Talon impaled her just above the knee. Her staff landed hard against a pillar and splintered in two. The Veiled Queen shrieked out her agony, flailing and trying to tug her leg off the spike but only succeeding in causing herself more pain.

The spikes began to retract. Including the one in Estre's leg — dragging her down with it. Ayrenn grabbed her sword and held it up just as Estre's legs gave out from the awkward angle and she fell forward onto the blade.

The smell of rotten eggs filled the air. Ayrenn shoved the dying Estre to the side and looked around. Her eyes met Kaylaneth's just as the plane of Oblivion collapsed in on itself.

 

 

~*~*~*~

_A day later_

"What was that thing with the spikes? I've never seen you do that before," Ayrenn asked from her nest of pillows.

For lack of better activities while they recovered from the grievous wounds both of them had received in Oblivion, the Queen and her Eye had all the time to talk. Raz had stopped by, true, and Urcelmo was just beyond the curtains if they needed him or a healer, but here in the sickbay it was just the two of them. Everyone else was either not injured enough to still be here or dead. It was a sobering thought.

"A Dragonknight ability, I think. It matches the description in one of the books my mum got me when I first started setting things on fire." Kaylaneth didn't move her eyes from the window. It looked out over the harbor, which was bustling with ships; relief supplies had come in from Vulkhel Guard and Firsthold that morning, and more from the mainland was due in the coming week.

"You'd never used it before?" A pause. "Wait, you set things on fire?"

"No, and yes. There wasn't much information on it in my books, and I was always more interested in the fire-related skills. It was how my family realized I was a Dragonknight — I spit fire at Eraegaer when he made me mad for some reason or another." Eraegaer was always the most childish of them, even though he was third-oldest. Life was a joke to him. "That's one of my brothers. He left the house shortly after that incident — he'd been mooching off Mum and she finally put her foot down."

"You didn't hurt him, though?"

"Oh, no. It was just a little bit of fire, not nearly as much as I can do now, and Mum is one of the best mages in Valenwood. She got a salve on his face and he was fine."

"I can't imagine growing up with so many brothers. Naemon is bad enough!"

Kaylaneth started, and turned from the window. "Your Majesty—"

"None of that here."

_That's new._ But the Queen's jaw was set. "Ayrenn, then." She bit her lip, thinking about the best way to phrase her doubts. "Are you worried about your brother?" _That was vague._ "I mean, Estre was his wife, right?" A little closer to what she meant without actually saying it. The last thing she wanted was to ruin their budding friendship. (She did not dare entertain thoughts of it ever being more than that — not that she thought Ayrenn was the type to let things like politics get in her way, but because she could not possibly be a queen's consort. Just brushing against the thought made the blood rise to her face.)

Ayrenn did not speak for a long time, just sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. The crown was off again, and looking at her directly dazzled Kaylaneth's eyes, so she turned away again and listened to the queen's shaky breaths. "I don't know," she said finally. "It would break my heart to so much as think that he knew anything about what Estre was doing. But I can't rule it out. So we're going to need to be extra careful next month."

"Next month? What's happening next month?"

"Oh, I suppose you wouldn't have heard. I'm going to Elden Root for a ratification ceremony. The Orrery there is said to be able to determine my aptitude to be Empress when — if — we win this blasted war."

"The Orrery?" Her mother had mentioned it, often, when she talked about her work. Kaylaneth did not understand all the terms her mother used, but she had gotten the idea that the device revealed true character and gave visions. And killed the unworthy. "But isn't that dangerous?"

Ayrenn sighed. "Yes... but I must know if I can lead the Dominion to peace on Tamriel. The Orrery is the only way I know of to see into my own heart."

_We should use it on Naemon_ , thought Kaylaneth sourly, but she said nothing.

 

 

~*~*~*~

_A week later_

Kaylaneth followed the road under the achingly familiar graht-oaks of the Long Coast, humming a merry tune. She had two weeks until she had to head to Elden Root to attend to the Queen, and she intended to make full use of that time. Hopefully her youngest brother Tagoroth would still be there, or someone else had dropped by to visit; she would dearly love to see any and all of them again. She wondered if her childhood friend Lucinda had finally escaped from under her father's thumb; if her mother had any more wrinkles; if they had thought she was dead.

That last one gave her pause, and her heart ached that she hadn't come sooner. She had probably made her poor mother sick with worry.

No matter. She was going _home_ , where she could forget about wars and queens and Daedric Princes for as long as possible.

Things were finally looking up.

~*~*~*~

**To Be Continued in**

**_When Coldharbor Calls Book II: Long and Lost_**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Oh my god I finally finished ~~it~~ the first part_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> It's been a bumpy ride, and I think I lost a few of you. Sorry.


End file.
